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http://www.archive.org/details/forestOOwhit 



THE FOREST 




THo/viAS - F • ">" 

" The man in the woods matches himself against the forces of nature " 






THE FOREST 



BY 



STEWART EDWARD WHITE 

AUTHOR OF " CONJUROR'S HOUSE " 

" THE BLAZED TRAIL " 

ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS FOG ARTY 




NEW YORK 

THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 

1903 



3 \*m 



S^o/?3 






COPYRIGHT I9O3 FOR THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 

Published October IQ03 



TO BILLY 



CONTENTS 



I. 


The Calling ..... 


PAGE 

i 


II. 


The Science of Going Light 


9 


III. 


The Jumping-off Place 


21 


IV. 


On Making Camp .... 


• 33 


V. 


On Lying Awake at Night . 


■ 5i 


VI. 


The 'Lunge ..... 


59 


VII. 


On Open-water Canoe Traveling 


73 


VIII. 


The Stranded Strangers 


85 


IX. 


On Flies • . 


103 


X. 


Cloche ...... 


119 


XI. 


The Habitants ..... 


135 


XII. 


The River ...... 


149 


XIII. 


The Hills ...... 


167 


XIV. 


On Walking through the Woods 


183 


XV. 


On Woods Indians . . 


201 


XVI. 


On Woods Indians — continued 


223 


XVII. 


The Catching of a Certain Fish . 


241 


XVIII. 


Man who walks by Moonlight 


2 55 


XIX. 


Apologia ...... 


267 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

" The man in the woods matches himself against the forces 

of nature " . . . . . . frontispiece ""' 

PAGE 

" It rained twelve of the first fourteen days we were out " . 14 S 
" This old soldier had come in from the Long Trail to bear 

again the flag of his country" . . . . 28 

" In fifteen minutes at most your meal is ready " . . 42 -■ 

' ' At such a time you will meet with adventures " . . 56 

" We . . . had struggled across open spaces where each wave 

was singly a problem, to fail in whose solution meant 

instant swamping " . . . . . 62 ' 

" The wind . . . had been succeeded by a heavy pall of 

fog" 76- 

"You are a judge of fiction ; take this" . . . .98 

" You are forced to the manipulation of a balsam fan " . 112 
" A la Claire Fontaine crooned by a man of impassive bulk 

and countenance, but with glowing eyes " . -130 

" He was a Patriarch" ...... 142 - 

" Sometimes I lost my footing entirely and trailed out behind 

like a streamer " . . . . . . .158 

" Watched the long North Country twilight steal up like a 

gray cloud from the east" . . . . .178 

" In this lovable mystery we journeyed all the rest of that 

morning " . . . . . . . .192 

"The Indians would rise to their feet for a single mo- 
ment" .. . . . . . . .216 

« ' Nor need you hope to pole a canoe upstream as do these 

people" ........ 230 

" Then in the twilight the battle" . . . . 250 

" Tawabinisay has a delightful grin" . . . .262 



THE CALLING 




:-'(,»; :,-., 



THE FOREST 



THE CALLING 

" The Red Gods make their medicine again." 

SOME time in February, when the snow and 
sleet have shut out from the wearied mind even 
the memory of spring, the man of the woods gen- 
erally receives his first inspiration. He may catch 
it from some companion's chance remark, a glance 
at the map, a vague recollection of a dim-past con- 
versation, or it may flash on him from the mere 
pronouncement of a name. The first faint thrill of 
discovery leaves him cool, but gradually, with the 
increasing enthusiasm of cogitation, the idea gains 
body, until finally it has grown to plan fit for dis- 
cussion. 

Of these many quickening potencies of inspira- 
tion, the mere name of a place seems to strike deep- 
est at the heart of romance. Color, mystery, the 
vastnesses of unexplored space are there, symbolized 
compactly for the aliment of imagination. It lures 

3 



THE FOREST 

the fancy as a fly lures the trout. Mattagami, Peace 
River, Kananaw, the House of the Touchwood Hills, 
Rupert's House, the Land of Little Sticks, Flying 
Post, Conjuror's House — how the syllables roll from 
the tongue, what pictures rise in instant response to 
their suggestion ! The journey of a thousand miles 
seems not too great a price to pay for the sight of a 
place called the Hills of Silence, for acquaintance 
with the people who dwell there, perhaps for a 
glimpse of the saga-spirit that so named its environ- 
ment. On the other hand, one would feel but little 
desire to visit Muggin's Corners, even though at 
their crossing one were assured of the deepest flavor 
of the Far North. 

The first response to the red god's summons is 
almost invariably the production of a fly-book and 
the complete rearrangement of all its contents. The 
next is a resumption of practice with the little pistol. 
The third, and last, is pencil and paper, and lists of 
grub and duffel, and estimates of routes and expenses, 
and correspondence with men who spell queerly, bear 
down heavily with blunt pencils, and agree to be 
at Black Beaver Portage on a certain date. Now, 
though the February snow and sleet still shut him 
in, the spring has drawn very near. He can feel the 
warmth of her breath rustling through his reviving 
memories. 

There are said to be sixty-eight roads to heaven, 
of which but one is the true way, although here 

4 



THE CALLING 

and there a by-path offers experimental variety to 
the restless and bold. The true way for the man in 
the woods to attain the elusive best of his wilder- 
ness experience is to go as light as possible, and the 
by-paths of departure from that principle lead only 
to the slightly increased carrying possibilities of 
open-water canoe trips, and permanent camps. 

But these prove to be not very independent side 
paths, never diverging so far from the main road 
that one may dare hope to conceal from a vigilant 
eye that he is not going light. 

To go light is to play the game fairly. The man 
in the woods matches himself against the forces of 
nature. In the towns he is warmed and fed and 
clothed so spontaneously and easily that after a time 
he perforce begins to doubt himself, to wonder 
whether his powers are not atrophied from disuse. 
And so, with his naked soul, he fronts the wilder- 
ness. It is a test, a measuring of strength, a prov- 
ing of his essential pluck and resourcefulness and 
manhood, an assurance of man's highest potency, the 
ability* to endure and to take care of himself. In 
just so far as he substitutes the ready-made of civil- 
ization for the wit-made of the forest, the pneumatic 
bed for the balsam boughs, in just so far is he relying 
on other men and other men's labor to take care of 
him. To exactly that extent is the test invalidated. 
He has not proved a courteous antagonist, for he 
has not stripped to the contest. 

5 



THE FOREST 

To go light is to play the game sensibly. For 
even when it is not so earnest, nor the stake so high, 
a certain common sense should take the place on a 
lower plane of the fair-play sense on the higher. A 
great many people find enjoyment in merely play- 
ing with nature. Through vacation they relax their 
minds, exercise mildly their bodies, and freshen the 
colors of their outlook on life. Such people like to 
live comfortably, work little, and enjoy existence 
lazily. Instead of modifying themselves to fit the life 
of the wilderness, they modify their city methods 
to fit open-air conditions. They do not need to strip 
to the contest, for contest there is none, and Indian 
packers are cheap at a dollar a day. But even so the 
problem of the greatest comfort — defining comfort 
as an accurate balance of effort expended to results 
obtained — can be solved only by the one formula. 
And that formula is, again, go light, for a superabun- 
dance of paraphernalia proves always more of a care 
than a satisfaction. When the woods offer you a 
thing ready made, it is the merest foolishness to 
transport that same thing an hundred miles for the 
sake of the manufacturer's trademark. 

I once met an outfit in the North Woods, plodding 
diligently across portage, laden like the camels of the 
desert. Three Indians swarmed back and forth a half 
dozen trips apiece. An Indian can carry over two 
hundred pounds. That evening a half-breed and I 
visited their camp and examined their outfit, always 

6 



THE CALLING 

with growing wonder. They had tent-poles and 
about fifty pounds of hardwood tent pegs, — in a 
wooded country where such things can be had for 
a clip of the axe. They had a system of ringed iron 
bars which could be so fitted together as to form a 
low open grill on which trout could be broiled, — 
weight twenty pounds, and split wood necessary for 
its efficiency. They had air mattresses and camp- 
chairs and oil lanterns. They had corpulent duffel 
bags apiece that would stand alone, and enough 
changes of clothes to last out dry-skinned a week's 
rain. And the leader of the party wore the wrinkled 
brow of tribulation. For he had to keep track of 
everything and see that package number twenty- 
eight was not left, and that package number six- 
teen did not get wet ; that the pneumatic bed did 
not get punctured, and that the canned goods did. 
Beside which the caravan was moving at the majestic 
rate of about five miles a day. 

Now tent-pegs can always be cut, and trout broiled 
beautifully by a dozen other ways, and candle lanterns 
fold up, and balsam can be laid in such a manner as 
to be as springy as a pneumatic mattress, and camp- 
chairs, if desired, can be quickly constructed with 
an axe, and clothes can always be washed or dried 
as long as fire burns and water runs, and any one of 
fifty other items of laborious burden could have been 
ingeniously and quickly substituted by any one of 
the Indians. It was not that we concealed a bucolic 



THE FOREST 

scorn of effete but solid comfort ; only it did seem 
ridiculous that a man should cumber himself with a 
fifth wheel on a smoothly macadamized road. 

The next morning Billy and I went cheerfully 
on our way. We were carrying an axe, a gun, 
blankets, an extra pair of drawers and socks apiece, 
a little grub, and an eight-pound shelter tent. We 
had been out a week, and we were having a good 
time. 



THE SCIENCE OF GOING LIGHT 




II 

THE SCIENCE OF GOING LIGHT 

" Now the Four-Way lodge is opened — now the smokes of Coun- 
cil rise — 
Pleasant smokes ere yet 'twixt trail and trail they choose." 

YOU can no more be told how to go light than 
you can be told how to hit a ball with a bat. 
It is something that must be lived through, and 
all advice on the subject has just about the value 
of an answer to a bashful young man who begged 
from one of our woman's periodicals help in over- 
coming the diffidence felt on entering a crowded 
room. The reply read: "Cultivate an easy, grace- 
ful manner." In like case I might hypothecate, 
" To go light, discard all but the really necessary 
articles." 

The sticking point, were you to press me close, 
would be the definition of the word " necessary," for 
the terms of such definition would have to be those 
solely and simply of a man's experience. Comforts, 
even most desirable comforts, are not necessities. A 
dozen times a day trifling emergencies will seem 
precisely to call for some little handy contrivance 



THE FOREST 

that would be just the thing, were it in the pack 
rather than at home. A disgorger does the business 
better than a pocket-knife ; a pair of oilskin trousers 
turns the wet better than does kersey ; a camp-stove 
will burn merrily in a rain lively enough to drown 
an open fire. Yet neither disgorger, nor oilskins, 
nor camp-stove can be considered in the light of 
necessitieSj for the simple reason that the conditions 
of their use occur too infrequently to compensate for 
the pains of their carriage. Or, to put it the other 
way, a few moments' work with a knife, wet knees 
occasionally, or an infrequent soggy meal are not too 
great a price to pay for unburdened shoulders. 

Nor on the other hand must you conclude that 
because a thing is a mere luxury in town, it is no- 
thing but that in the woods. Most woodsmen own 
some little ridiculous item of outfit without which 
they could not be happy. And when a man can- 
not be happy lacking a thing, that thing becomes 
a necessity. I knew one who never stirred without 
borated talcum powder; another who must have his 
mouth-organ; a third who was miserable without a 
small bottle of salad dressing ; I confess to a pair of 
light buckskin gloves. Each man must decide for 
himself, — remembering always the endurance limit 
of human shoulders. 

A necessity is that which, by your own experience, 
you have found you cannot do without. As a bit 
of practical advice, however, the following system 

12 



THE SCIENCE OF GOING LIGHT 

of elimination may be recommended. When you 
return from a trip, turn your duffel bag upside down 
on the floor. Of the contents make three piles, — 
three piles conscientiously selected in the light of 
what has happened rather than what ought to have 
happened, or what might have happened. It is diffi- 
cult to do this. Preconceived notions, habits of civ- 
ilization, theory for future, imagination, all stand in 
the eye of your honesty. Pile number one should 
comprise those articles you have used every day; 
pile number two, those you have used occasionally; 
pile number three, those you have not used at all. 
If you are resolute and single-minded, you will at 
once discard the latter two. 

Throughout the following winter you will be at- 
tacked by misgivings. To be sure, you wore the 
mosquito hat but once or twice, and the fourth pair 
of socks not at all ; but then the mosquitoes might be 
thicker next time, and a series of rainy days and cold 
nights might make it desirable to have a dry pair of 
socks to put on at night. The past has been x, but 
the future might be y. One by one the discarded 
creep back into the list. And by the opening of 
next season you have made toward perfection by 
only the little space of a mackintosh coat and a ten- 
gauge gun. 

But in the years to come you learn better and 
better the simple woods lesson of substitution or 
doing without. You find that discomfort is as soon 

13 



THE FOREST 

forgotten as pain; that almost anything can be en- 
dured if it is but for the time being ; that absolute 
physical comfort is worth but a very small price in 
avoirdupois. Your pack shrinks. 

In fact, it really never ceases shrinking. Only last 
summer taught me the uselessness of an extra pair 
of trousers. It rains in the woods; streams are to 
be waded ; the wetness of leaves is greater than the 
wetness of many rivers. Logically, naturally, inevi- 
tably, such conditions point to change of garments 
when camp is made. We always change our clothes 
when we get wet in the city. So for years I carried 
those extra nether garments, — and continued in the 
natural exposure to sun and wind and camp-fire to 
dry off before change time, or to hang the damp 
clothes from the ridge-pole for resumption in the 
morning. And then one day the web of that par- 
ticular convention broke. We change wet trousers 
in the town; we do not in the woods. The extras 
were relegated to pile number three, and my pack, 
already apparently down to a minimum, lost a few 
pounds more. 

You will want a hat, a good hat to turn rain, with 
a medium brim. If you are wise, you will get it too 
small for your head, and rip out the lining. The felt 
will cling tenaciously to your hair, so that you will 
find the snatches of the brush and the wind generally 
unavailing. 

By way of undergarments wear woolen. Buy win- 

14 




It rained twelve of the first fourteen days we were out ' 



THE SCIENCE OF GOING LIGHT 

ter weights even for midsummer. In traveling with 
a pack a man is going to sweat in streams, no matter 
what he puts on or takes off, and the thick garment 
will be found no more oppressive than the thin. 
And then in the cool of the woods or of the even- 
ing he avoids a chill. And he can plunge into the 
coldest water with impunity, sure that ten minutes 
of the air will dry him fairly well. Until you have 
shivered in clammy cotton, you cannot realize the 
importance of this point. Ten minutes of cotton 
underwear in cold water will chill. On the other 
hand, suitably clothed in wool, I have waded the ice 
water of north country streams when the thermome- 
ter was so low I could see my breath in the air, with- 
out other discomfort than a cold ring around my 
legs to mark the surface of the water, and a slight 
numbness in my feet when I emerged. Therefore, 
even in hot weather, wear heavy wool. It is the most 
comfortable. Undoubtedly you will come to believe 
this only by experience. 

Do not carry a coat. This is another preconcep- 
tion of civilization, exceedingly difficult to get rid 
of You will never wear it while packing. In a 
rain you will find that it wets through so promptly 
as to be of little use ; or, if waterproof, the inside 
condensation will more than equal the rain-water. 
In camp you will discard it because it will impede 
the swing of your arms. The end of that coat will 
be a brief half hour after supper, and a makeshift 

i5 



THE FOREST 

roll to serve as a pillow during the night. And for 
these a sweater is better in every way. 

In fact, if you feel you must possess another out- 
side garment, let it be an extra sweater. You can 
sleep in it, use it when your day garment is soaked, 
or even tie things in it as in a bag. It is not neces- 
sary, however. 

One good shirt is enough. When you wash it, 
substitute the sweater until it dries. In fact, by keep- 
ing the sweater always in your waterproof bag, you 
possess a dry garment to change into. Two hand- 
kerchiefs are enough. One should be of silk, for 
neck, head, or — in case of cramps or intense cold — 
the stomach ; the other of colored cotton for the 
pocket. Both can be quickly washed, and dried en 
route. Three pairs of heavy wool socks will be 
enough, — one for wear, one for night, and one for 
extra. A second pair of drawers supplements the 
sweater when a temporary day change is desirable. 
Heavy kersey " driver's " trousers are the best. They 
are cheap, dry very quickly, and are not easily 
"picked out" by the brush. 

The best blanket is that made by the Hudson 
Bay Company for its servants, — a "three-point" 
for summer is heavy enough. The next best is our 
own gray army blanket. One of rubber should fold 
about it, and a pair of narrow buckle straps is handy 
to keep the bundle right and tight and waterproof. 
As for a tent, buy the smallest shelter you can get 

16 



THE SCIENCE OF GOING LIGHT 

along with, have it made of balloon silk well water- 
proofed, and supplement it with a duplicate tent of 
light cheesecloth to suspend inside as a fly-proof 
defense. A seven-by-seven three-man A-tent, which 
would weigh between twenty and thirty pounds if 
made of duck, means only about eight pounds con- 
structed of this material. And it is waterproof. I 
own one which I have used for three seasons. It 
has been employed as tarpaulin, fly, even blanket on 
a pinch; it has been packed through the roughest 
country; I have even pressed it into service as a sort 
of canoe lining; but it is still as good as ever. Such 
a tent sometimes condenses a little moisture in a cold 
rain, but it never " sprays " as does a duck shelter ; 
it never leaks simply because you have accidentally 
touched its under-surface ; and, best of all, it weighs 
no more after a rain than before it. This latter item 
is perhaps its best recommendation. The confront- 
ing with equanimity of a wet day's journey in the 
shower-bath brush of our northern forests requires a 
degree of philosophy which a gratuitous ten pounds 
of soaked-up water sometimes most effectually breaks 
down. I know of but one place where such a tent 
can be bought. The address will be gladly sent to 
any one practically interested. 

As for the actual implements of the trade, they 
are not many, although of course the sporting goods 
stores are full of all sorts of " handy contrivances." 
A small axe, — one of the pocket size will do, if 

*7 



THE FOREST 

you get the right shape and balance, although a light 
regulation axe is better; a thin-bladed sheath-knife 
of the best steel ; a pocket-knife ; a compass; a water- 
proof match-safe; fishing-tackle; firearms; and cook- 
ing utensils comprise the list. All others belong 
to permanent camps, or open-water cruises, — not to 
" hikes " in the woods. 

The items, with the exception of the last two, 
seem to explain themselves. During the summer 
months in the North Woods you will not need a rifle. 
Partridges, spruce hens, ptarmigan, rabbits, ducks, 
and geese are usually abundant enough to fill the 
provision list. For them, of course, a shotgun is the 
thing; but since such a weapon weighs many pounds, 
and its ammunition many more, I have come gradu- 
ally to depend entirely on a pistol. The instrument 
is single shot, carries a six-inch barrel, is fitted with 
a special butt, and is built on the graceful lines of a 
38-calibre Smith & Wesson revolver. Its cartridge 
is the 22 long-rifle, a target size, that carries as accu- 
rately as you can hold for upwards of an hundred 
yards. With it I have often killed a half dozen of 
partridges from the same tree. The ammunition is 
light. Altogether it is a most satisfactory, conven- 
ient, and accurate weapon, and quite adequate to all 
small game. In fact an Indian named Tawabinisay, 
after seeing it perform, once borrowed it to kill a 
moose. 

" I shootum in eye," said he. 



THE SCIENCE OF GOING LIGHT 

By way of cooking utensils, buy aluminum. It is 
expensive, but so light and so easily cleaned that it 
is well worth all you may have to pay. If you are 
alone you will not want to carry much hardware. I 
made a twenty-day trip once with nothing but a tin 
cup and a frying-pan. Dishes, pails, wash-basins, and 
other receptacles can always be made of birch bark 
and cedar withes — by one who knows how. The 
ideal outfit for two or three is a cup, fork, and spoon 
apiece, one tea-pail, two kettle-pails, and a frying-pan. 
The latter can be used as a bread-oven. 

A few minor items, of practically no weight, sug- 
gest themselves, — toilet requisites, fly-dope, needle 
and thread, a cathartic, pain-killer, a roll of surgeon's 
bandage, pipe and tobacco. But when the pack is 
made up, and the duffel bag tied, you find that, while 
fitted for every emergency but that of catastrophe, 
you are prepared to " go light." 



19 



THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 




Ill 

THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 

SOMETIME, no matter how long your journey, 
you will reach a spot whose psychological effect 
is so exactly like a dozen others that you will recog- 
nize at once its kinship with former experience. Mere 
physical likeness does not count at all. It may pos- 
sess a water front of laths and sawdust, or an outlook 
over broad, shimmering, heat-baked plains. It may 
front the impassive fringe of a forest, or it may skirt 
the calm stretch of a river. But whether of log or 
mud, stone or unpainted board, its identity becomes 
at first sight indubitably evident. Were you, by the 
wave of some beneficent wand, to be transported 
direct to it from the heart of the city, you could not 
fail to recognize it. " The jumping-off place ! " you 
would cry ecstatically, and turn with unerring instinct 
to the Aromatic Shop. 

For here is where begins the Long Trail. Whether 
it will lead you through the forests, or up the hills, or 
over the plains, or by invisible water paths ; whether 
you will accomplish it on horseback, or in canoe, or 
by the transportation of your own two legs ; whether 

23 



THE FOREST 

your companions shall be white or red, or merely 
the voices of the wilds — these things matter not a 
particle. In the symbol of this little town you loose 
your hold on the world of made things, and shift for 
yourself among the unchanging conditions of nature. 
Here the faint forest flavor, the subtle invisible 
breath of freedom, stirs faintly across men's conven- 
tions. The ordinary affairs of life savor of this tang — 
a trace of wildness in the domesticated berry. In the 
dress of the inhabitants is a dash of color, a careless- 
ness of port; in the manner of their greeting is the 
clear, steady-eyed taciturnity of the silent places; 
through the web of their gray talk of ways and means 
and men's simpler beliefs runs a thread of color. One 
hears strange, suggestive words and phrases — ara- 
pajo, capote, arroyo, the diamond hitch, cache, butte, 
coule, muskegs, portage, and a dozen others coined 
into the tender of daily use. And occasionally, when 
the expectation is least alert, one encounters sud- 
denly the very symbol of the wilderness itself — a 
dust-whitened cowboy, an Indian packer with his 
straight, fillet-confined hair, a voyageur gay in red 
sash and ornamented moccasins, one of the Com- 
pany's canoemen, hollow-cheeked from the river — 
no costumed show exhibit, but fitting naturally into 
the scene, bringing something of the open space with 
him — so that in your imagination the little town 
gradually takes on the color of mystery which an 
older community utterly lacks. 

24 



THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 

But perhaps the strongest of the influences which 
unite to assure the psychological kinships of thejump- 
ing-off places is that of the Aromatic Shop. It is 
usually a board affair, with a broad high sidewalk 
shaded by a wooden awning. You enter through a 
narrow door, and find yourself facing two dusky aisles 
separated by a narrow division of goods, and flanked 
by wooden counters. So far it is exactly like the cor- 
ner store of our rural districts. But in the dimness of 
these two aisles lurks the spirit of the wilds. There 
in a row hang fifty pair of smoke-tanned moccasins ; 
in another an equal number of oil-tanned ; across the 
background you can make out snowshoes. The 
shelves are high with blankets, — three-point, four- 
point, — thick and warm for the out-of-doors. Should 
you care to examine, the storekeeper will hook down 
from aloft capotes of different degrees of fineness. 
Fathoms of black tobacco-rope lie coiled in tubs. 
Tump-lines welter in a tangle of dimness. On a 
series of little shelves is the ammunition, fascinating 
in the attraction of mere numbers — 44 Winchester, 
45 Colt, 40-82, 30-40, 44 S. & W. — they all con- 
note something to the accustomed mind, just as do 
the numbered street names of New York. 

An exploration is always bringing something new 
to light among the commonplaces of ginghams and 
working shirts and canned goods and stationery and 
the other thousands of civilized drearinesses to be 
found in every country store. From under the coun- 

25 



THE FOREST 

ter you drag out a mink skin or so; from the dark 
corner an assortment of steel traps. In a loft a birch- 
bark mokok, fifty pounds heavy with granulated 
maple sugar, dispenses a faint perfume. 

For this is, above all, the Aromatic Shop. A hun- 
dred ghosts of odors mingle to produce the spirit of 
it. The reek of the camp-fires is in its buckskin, 
of the woods in its birch bark, of the muskegs in 
its sweet grass, of the open spaces in its peltries, of 
the evening meal in its coffees and bacons, of the 
portage trail in the leather of the tump-lines. I am 
speaking now of the country of which we are to write. 
The shops of the other jumping-off places are equally 
aromatic — whether with the leather of saddles, the 
freshness of ash paddles, or the pungency of marline ; 
and once the smell of them is in your nostrils you 
cannot but away. 

The Aromatic Shop is always kept by the wisest, 
the most accommodating, the most charming shop- 
keeper in the world. He has all leisure to give you, 
and enters into the innermost spirit of your buying. 
He is of supernal sagacity in regard to supplies and 
outfits, and if he does not know all about routes, at 
least he is acquainted with the very man who can tell 
you everything you want to know. He leans both 
elbows on the counter, you swing your feet, and to- 
gether you go over the list, while the Indian stands 
smoky and silent in the background. "Now, if 
I was you," says he, " I 'd take just a little more 

26 



THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 

pork. You won't be eatin' so much yourself, but 
these Injuns ain't got no bottom when it comes to 
sow-belly. And I would n't buy all that coffee. You 
ain't goin' to want much after the first edge is worn 
off. Tea 's the boy." The Indian shoots a few rapid 
words across the discussion. " He says you '11 want 
some iron shoes to fit on canoe poles for when you 
come back upstream," interprets your friend. " I 
guess that's right. I ain't got none, but th' black- 
smith '11 fit you out all right. You '11 find him just 
below — never mind, don't you bother, I '11 see to all 
that for you." 

The next morning he saunters into view at the 
river-bank. " Thought I 'd see you off," he replies 
to your expression of surprise at his early rising. 
" Take care of yourself." And so the last hand-clasp 
of civilization is extended to you from the little 
Aromatic Shop. 

Occasionally, however, though very rarely, you 
step to the Long Trail from the streets of a raw 
modern town. The chance presence of some local 
industry demanding a large population of workmen, 
combined with first-class railroad transportation, may 
plant an electric-lighted, saloon-lined, brick-hoteled 
city in the middle of the wilderness. Lumber, mines, 
— especially of the baser metals or commercial min- 
erals, — fisheries, a terminus of water freightage, may 
one or all call into existence a community a hundred 
years in advance of its environment. Then you lose 

27 



THE FOREST 

the savor of the jump-off. Nothing can quite take 
the place of the instant plunge into the wilderness, 
for you must travel three or four days from such 
a place before you sense the forest in its vastness, 
even though deer may eat the cabbages at the edge 
of town. Occasionally, however, by force of crude 
contrast to the brick-heated atmosphere, the breath 
of the woods reaches your cheek, and always you own 
a very tender feeling for the cause of it. 

Dick and myself were caught in such a place. 
It was an unfinished little town, with brick-fronted 
stores, arc-lights swaying over fathomless mud, big 
superintendent's and mill-owner's houses of bastard 
architecture in a blatant superiority of hill location, a 
hotel whose office chairs supported a variety of cheap 
drummers, and stores screeching in an attempt at 
metropolitan smartness. We inspected the stand- 
pipe and the docks, walked a careless mile of board 
walk, kicked a dozen pugnacious dogs from our 
setter, Deuce, and found ourselves at the end of our 
resources. As a crowd seemed to be gathering about 
the wooden railway station, we joined it in sheer idle- 
ness. 

It seemed that an election had taken place the 
day before, that one Smith had been chosen to the 
Assembly, and that, though this district had gone 
anti-Smith, the candidate was expected to stop off 
an hour on his way to a more westerly point. Con- 
sequently the town was on hand to receive him. 

28 




TM»^*. V S P'^* 



" This old soldier had come in from the Long Trail to bear again 
the flag of his country ' ' 



THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 

The crowd, we soon discovered, was bourgeois in 
the extreme. Young men from the mill escorted 
young women from the shops. The young men 
wore flaring collars three sizes too large ; the young 
women, white cotton mitts three sizes too small. 
The older men spat, and talked through their noses ; 
the women drawled out a monotonous flow of speech 
concerning the annoyances of domestic life. A gang 
of uncouth practical jokers, exploding in horse-laugh- 
ter, skylarked about, jostling rudely. A village band, 
uniformed solely with cheap carriage-cloth caps, 
brayed excruciatingly. The reception committee 
had decorated, with red and white silesia streamers 
and rosettes, an ordinary side-bar buggy, to which a 
long rope had been attached, that the great man 
might be dragged by his fellow-citizens to the pub- 
lic square. 

Nobody seemed to be taking the affair too seri- 
ously. It was evidently more than half a joke. Anti- 
Smith was more good-humoredly in evidence than 
the winning party. Just this touch of buffoonery 
completed our sense of the farce-comedy character 
of the situation. The town was tawdry in its pre- 
parations — and knew it ; but half sincere in its 
enthusiasm — and knew it. If the crowd had been 
composed of Americans, we should have anticipated 
an unhappy time for Smith ; but good, loyal Cana- 
dians, by the limitations of temperament, could get 
no further than a spirit of manifest irreverence. 

29 



THE FOREST 

In the shifting of the groups Dick and I became 
separated, but shortly I made him out worming his 
way excitedly toward me, his sketch-book open in 
his hand. 

" Come here," he whispered. " There 's going to be 
fun. They 're going to open up on old Smith, after 
all." 

I followed. The decorated side-bar buggy might 
be well meant ; the village band need not have been 
interpreted as an ironical compliment; the rest of 
the celebration might indicate paucity of resource 
rather than facetious intent ; but surely the figure of 
fun before us could not be otherwise construed than 
as a deliberate advertising in the face of success of 
the town's real attitude toward the celebration. 

The man was short. He wore a felt hat, so big 
that it rested on his ears. A gray wool shirt hung 
below his neck. A cutaway coat miles too large 
depended below his knees and to the first joints 
of his fingers. By way of official uniform his legs 
were incased in an ordinary rough pair of miller's 
white trousers, on which broad stripes of red flannel 
had been roughly sewn. Everything was wrinkled in 
the folds of too-bigness. As though to accentuate 
the note, the man stood very erect, very military, and 
supported in one hand the staff of an English flag. 
This figure of fun, this man made from the slop- 
chest, this caricature of a scarecrow, had been put 
forth by heavy-handed facetiousness to the post of 

30 



THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 

greatest honor. He was Standard-Bearer to the occa- 
sion! Surely subtle irony could go no further. 

A sudden movement caused the man to turn. 
One sleeve of the faded, ridiculous old cutaway was 
empty. He turned again. From under the ear- 
flanging hat looked unflinching the clear, steady blue 
eye of the woodsman. And so we knew. This old 
soldier had come in from the Long Trail to bear 
again the flag of his country. If his clothes were 
old and ill-fitting, at least they were his best, and the 
largeness of the empty sleeve belittled the too-large- 
ness of the other. In all this ribald, laughing, irrev- 
erent, commonplace, semi-vicious crowd he was the 
one note of sincerity. To him this was a real occa- 
sion, and the exalted reverence in his eye for the task 
he was so simply performing was Smith's real tri- 
umph — if he could have known it. We understood 
now, we felt the imminence of the Long Trail. For 
the first time the little brick, tawdry town gripped 
our hearts with the well-known thrill of the Jumping- 
Off Place. Suddenly the great, simple, unashamed 
wilderness drew near us as with the rush of wings. 



31 



ON MAKING CAMP 




IV 
ON MAKING CAMP 

" Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight ? Who hath heard the 

birch log burning ? 
Who is quick to read the noises of the night ? 
Let him follow with the others, for the young men's feet are turning 
To the camps of proved desire and known delight. ' ' 

IN the Ojibway language wigwam means a good 
spot for camping, a place cleared for a camp, a 
camp as an abstract proposition, and a camp in the 
concrete as represented by a tent, a thatched shelter, 
or a conical tepee. In like manner, the English 
word camp lends itself to a variety of concepts. I 
once slept in a four-poster bed over a polished floor 
in an elaborate servant-haunted structure which, 
mainly because it was built of logs and overlooked 
a lake, the owner always spoke of as his camp. 
Again, I once slept on a bed of prairie grass, before 
a fire of dried buffalo chips and mesquite, wrapped 
in a single light blanket, while a good vigorous rain- 
storm made new cold places on me and under me 
all night. In the morning the cowboy with whom 
I was traveling remarked that this was " sure a lone- 
some proposition as a camp." 

35 



THE FOREST 

Between these two extremes is infinite variety, 
grading upwards through the divers bivouacs of 
snow, plains, pines, or hills, to the bark shelter ; past 
the dog-tent, the A-tent, the wall-tent, to the elaborate 
permanent canvas cottage of the luxurious camper, 
the dug-out winter retreat of the range cowboy, the 
trapper's cabin, the great log-built lumber-jack com- 
munities, and the last refinements of sybaritic summer 
homes in the Adirondacks. All these are camps. 
And when you talk of making camp you must know 
whether that process is to mean only a search for 
rattlesnakes and enough acrid-smoked fuel to boil 
tea, or a winter's consultation with an expert archi- 
tect ; whether your camp is to be made on the prin- 
ciple of Omar's one-night Sultan, or whether it is 
intended to accommodate the full days of an entire 
summer. 

But to those who tread the Long Trail the mak- 
ing of camp resolves itself into an algebraical for- 
mula. After a man has traveled all day through the 
Northern wilderness he wants to rest, and anything 
that stands between himself and his repose he must 
get rid of in as few motions as is consistent with 
reasonable thoroughness. The end in view is a hot 
meal and a comfortable dry place to sleep. The 
straighter he can draw the line to those two points 
the happier he is. 

Early in his woods experience Dick became pos- 
sessed with the desire to do everything for himself. 

36 



ON MAKING CAMP 

As this was a laudable striving for self-sufficiency, I 
called a halt at about three o'clock one afternoon in 
order to give him plenty of time. 

Now Dick is a good, active, able-bodied boy, pos- 
sessed of average intelligence and rather more than 
average zeal. He even had theory of a sort, for he 
had read various "Boy Campers, or the Trapper's 
Guide," "How to Camp Out," "The Science of 
Woodcraft," and other able works. He certainly 
had ideas enough, and confidence enough. I sat 
down on a log. 

At the end of three hours' flusteration, heat, worry, 
and good hard work, he had accomplished the fol- 
lowing results : A tent, very saggy, very askew, cov- 
ered a four-sided area — it was not a rectangle — of 
very bumpy ground. A hodge-podge bonfire, in the 
centre of which an inaccessible coffee-pot toppled 
menacingly, alternately threatened to ignite the entire 
surrounding forest or to go out altogether through 
lack of fuel. Personal belongings strewed the ground 
near the fire, and provisions cumbered the entrance 
to the tent. Dick was anxiously mixing batter for 
the cakes, attempting to stir a pot of rice often 
enough to prevent it from burning, and trying to 
rustle sufficient dry wood to keep the fire going. 
This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up 
and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert 
his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the 
kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out 

37 



THE FOREST 

the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His 
movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry 
of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine 
needles, a certain proportion of which found their 
way into the coffee, the rice, and the sticky batter, 
while the smaller articles of personal belonging, has- 
tily dumped from the duffel-bag, gradually disap- 
peared from view in the manner of Pompeii and 
ancient Vesuvius. Dick burned his fingers and stum- 
bled about and swore, and looked so comically-pa- 
thetically red-faced through the smoke that I, seated 
on the log, at the same time laughed and pitied. 
And in the end, when he needed a continuous steady 
fire to fry his cakes, he suddenly discovered that dry 
twigs do not make coals, and that his previous opera- 
tions had used up all the fuel within easy circle of 
the camp. 

So he had to drop everything for the purpose of 
rustling wood, while the coffee chilled, the rice cooled, 
the bacon congealed, and all the provisions, cooked 
and uncooked, gathered entomological specimens. 
At the last, the poor bedeviled theorist made a hasty 
meal of scorched food, brazenly postponed the wash- 
ing of dishes until the morrow, and coiled about his 
hummocky couch to dream the nightmares of com- 
plete exhaustion. 

Poor Dick ! I knew exactly how he felt, how the 
low afternoon sun scorched, how the fire darted out 
at unexpected places, how the smoke followed him 

38 



ON MAKING CAMP 

around, no matter on which side of the fire he placed 
himself, how the flies all took to biting when both 
hands were occupied, and how they all miraculously 
disappeared when he had set down the frying-pan and 
knife to fight them. I could sympathize, too, with 
the lonely, forlorn, lost-dog feeling that clutched him 
after it was all over. I could remember how big and 
forbidding and unfriendly the forest had once looked 
to me in like circumstances, so that I had felt sud- 
denly thrust outside into empty spaces. Almost was 
I tempted to intervene; but I liked Dick, and I 
wanted to do him good. This experience was har- 
rowing, but it prepared his mind for the seeds of 
wisdom. By the following morning he had chastened 
his spirit, forgotten the assurance breathed from the 
windy pages of the Boy Trapper Library, and was 
ready to learn. 

Have you ever watched a competent portraitist at 
work ? The infinite pains a skilled man spends on 
the preliminaries before he takes one step towards a 
likeness nearly always wears down the patience of 
the sitter. He measures with his eye, he plumbs, 
he sketches tentatively, he places in here a dab, there 
a blotch, he puts behind him apparently unproduc- 
tive hours — and then all at once he is ready to begin 
something that will not have to be done over again. 
An amateur, however, is carried away by his desire 
for results. He dashes in a hit-or-miss early effect, 
which grows into an approximate likeness almost 

39 



THE FOREST 

immediately, but which will require infinite labor, 
alteration, and anxiety to beat into finished shape. 

The case of the artist in making camps is exactly 
similar, and the philosophical reasons for his failure 
are exactly the same. To the superficial mind a camp 
is a shelter, a bright fire, and a smell of cooking. So 
when a man is very tired he cuts across lots to those 
three results. He pitches his tent, lights his fire, 
puts over his food — and finds himself drowned in 
detail, like my friend Dick. 

The following is, in brief, what during the next 
six weeks I told that youth, by precept, by homily, 
and by making the solution so obvious that he could 
work it out for himself. 

When five or six o'clock draws near, begin to look 
about you for a good level dry place, elevated some 
few feet above the surroundings. Drop your pack 
or beach your canoe. Examine the location care- 
fully. You will want two trees about ten feet apart, 
from which to suspend your tent, and a bit of flat 
ground underneath them. Of course the flat ground 
need not be particularly unencumbered by brush or 
saplings, so the combination ought not to be hard 
to discover. Now return to your canoe. Do not 
unpack the tent. 

With the little axe clear the ground thoroughly. 
By bending a sapling over strongly with the left hand, 
clipping sharply at the strained fibers, and then bend- 
ing it as strongly the other way to repeat the axe 

40 



ON MAKING CAMP 

stroke on the other side, you will find that treelets of 
even two or three inches diameter can be felled by 
two blows. In a very few moments you will have 
accomplished a hole in the forest, and your two sup- 
porting trees will stand sentinel at either end of a 
most respectable-looking clearing. Do not unpack 
the tent. 

Now, although the ground seems free of all but 
unimportant growths, go over it thoroughly for little 
shrubs and leaves. They look soft and yielding, but 
are often possessed of unexpectedly abrasive roots. 
Besides, they mask the face of the ground. When 
you have finished pulling them up by the roots, you 
will find that your supposedly level plot is knobby 
with hummocks. Stand directly over each little 
mound; swing the back of your axe vigorously 
against it, adze-wise, between your legs. Nine times 
out of ten it will crumble, and the tenth time means 
merely a root to cut or a stone to pry out. At length 
you are possessed of a plot of clean, fresh earth, level 
and soft, free from projections. But do not unpack 
your tent. 

Lay a young birch or maple an inch or so in 
diameter across a log. Two clips will produce you 
a tent-peg. If you are inexperienced, and cherish 
memories of striped lawn markees, you will cut them 
about six inches long. If you are wise and old and 
gray in woods experience, you will multiply that 
length by four. Then your loops will not slip off, 

41 



THE FOREST 

and you will have a real grip on mother earth, than 
which nothing can be more desirable in the event of 
a heavy rain and wind squall about midnight. If 
your axe is as sharp as it ought to be, you can point 
them more neatly by holding them suspended in 
front of you while you snip at their ends with the axe, 
rather than by resting them against a solid base. Pile 
them together at the edge of the clearing. Cut a 
crotched sapling eight or ten feet long. Now unpack 
your tent. 

In a wooded country you will not take the time 
to fool with tent-poles. A stout line run through 
the eyelets and along the apex will string it success- 
fully between your two trees. Draw the line as tight 
as possible, but do not be too unhappy if, after your 
best efforts, it still sags a little. That is what your 
long crotched stick is for. Stake out your four corners. 
If you get them in a good rectangle and in such re- 
lation to the apex as to form two isosceles triangles 
of the ends, your tent will stand smoothly. There- 
fore, be an artist and do it right. Once the four 
corners are well' placed, the rest follows naturally. 
Occasionally in the North Country it will be found 
that the soil is too thin, over the rocks, to grip the 
tent-pegs. In that case drive them at a sharp angle 
as deep as they will go, and then lay a large flat stone 
across the slant of them. Thus anchored, you will 
ride out a gale. Finally, wedge your long sapling 
crotch under the line — outside the tent, of course — 

42 




" In fifteen minutes at most your meal is ready " 



ON MAKING CAMP 

to tighten it. Your shelter is up. If you are a 
woodsman, ten or fifteen minutes has sufficed to 
accomplish all this. 

There remains the question of a bed, and you 'd 
better attend to it now, while your mind is still oc- 
cupied with the shelter problem. Fell a good thrifty 
young balsam and set to work pulling off the fans. 
Those you cannot strip off easily with your hands 
are too tough for your purpose. Lay them carelessly 
crisscross against the blade of your axe and up the 
handle. They will not drop off, and when you shoul- 
der that axe you will resemble a walking haystack, 
and will probably experience a genuine emotion of 
surprise at the amount of balsam that can be thus 
transported. In the tent lay smoothly one layer of 
fans, convex side up, butts toward the foot. Now 
thatch the rest on top of this, thrusting the butt ends 
underneath the layer already placed in such a manner 
as to leave the fan ends curving up and down towards 
the foot of your bed. Your second emotion of sur- 
prise will assail you as you realize how much spring 
inheres in but two or three layers thus arranged. 
When you have spread your rubber blanket, you will 
be possessed of a bed as soft and a great deal more 
aromatic and luxurious than any you would be able 
to buy in town. 

Your next care is to clear a living space in front of 
the tent. This will take you about twenty seconds, 
for you need not be particular as to stumps, hum- 

43 



THE FOREST 

mocks, or small brush. All you want is room for 
cooking, and suitable space for spreading out your 
provisions. But do not unpack anything yet. 

Your fireplace you will build of two green logs 
laid side by side. The fire is to be made between 
them. They should converge slightly, in order that 
the utensils to be rested across them may be of va- 
rious sizes. If your vicinity yields flat stones, they 
build up even better than the logs — unless they hap- 
pen to be of granite. Granite explodes most discon- 
certingly. Poles sharpened, driven upright into the 
ground, and then pressed down to slant over the 
fireplace, will hold your kettles a suitable height 
above the blaze. 

Fuel should be your next thought. A roll of birch 
bark first of all. Then some of the small, dry, resin- 
ous branches that stick out from the trunks of me- 
dium-sized pines, living or dead. Finally, the wood 
itself. If you are merely cooking supper, and have 
no thought for a warmth-fire or a friendship-fire, I 
should advise you to stick to the dry pine branches, 
helped out, in the interest of coals for frying, by 
a little dry maple or birch. If you need more of a 
blaze, you will have to search out, fell, and split a 
standing dead tree. This is not at all necessary. I 
have traveled many weeks in the woods without 
using a more formidable implement than a one-pound 
hatchet. Pile your fuel — a complete supply, all 
you are going to need — by the side of your already 

44 



ON MAKING CAMP 

improvised fireplace. But, as you value your peace 
of mind, do not fool with matches. 

It will be a little difficult to turn your mind from 
the concept of fire, to which all these preparations 
have compellingly led it, — especially as a fire is the 
one cheerful thing your weariness needs the most 
at this time of day, — but you must do so. Leave 
everything just as it is, and unpack your provisions. 

First of all, rinse your utensils. Hang your tea- 
pail, with the proper quantity of water, from one 
slanting pole, and your kettle from the other. Salt 
the water in the latter receptacle. Peel your potatoes, 
if you have any ; open your little provision sacks ; 
puncture your tin cans, if you have any ; slice your 
bacon ; clean your fish ; pluck your birds ; mix your 
dough or batter ; spread your table tinware on your 
tarpaulin or a sheet of birch bark ; cut a kettle-lifter ; 
see that everything you are going to need is within 
direct reach of your hand as you squat on your heels 
before the fireplace. Now light your fire. 

The civilized method is to build a fire and then to 
touch a match to the completed structure. If well 
done and in a grate or stove, this works beautifully. 
Only in the woods you have no grate. The only sure 
way is as follows : Hold a piece of birch bark in your 
hand. Shelter your match all you know how. When 
the bark has caught, lay it in your fireplace, assist it 
with more bark, and gradually build up, twig by twig, 
stick by stick, from the first pin-point of flame, all 

45 



THE FOREST 

the fire you are going to need. It will not be much. 
The little hot blaze rising between the parallel logs 
directly against the aluminum of your utensils will do 
the business in very short order. In fifteen minutes 
at most your meal is ready. And you have been 
able to attain to hot food thus quickly because you 
were prepared. 

In case of very wet weather the affair is altered 
somewhat. If the rain has just commenced, do not 
stop to clear out very thoroughly, but get your tent 
up as quickly as possible, in order to preserve an area 
of comparatively dry ground. But if the earth is 
already soaked, you had best build a bonfire to dry 
out by, while you cook over a smaller fire a little dis- 
tance removed, leaving the tent until later. Or it 
may be well not to pitch the tent at all, but to lay 
it across slanting supports at an angle to reflect the 
heat against the ground. 

It is no joke to light a fire in the rain. An Indian 
can do it more easily than a white man, but even an 
Indian has more trouble than the story-books acknow- 
ledge. You will need a greater quantity of birch 
bark, a bigger pile of resinous dead limbs from the 
pine-trees, and perhaps the heart of a dead pine stub 
or stump. Then, with infinite patience, you may 
be able to tease the flame. Sometimes a small dead 
birch contains in the waterproof envelope of its bark 
a species of powdery, dry touchwood that takes the 
flame readily. Still, it is easy enough to start a 

4 6 



ON MAKING CAMP 

blaze — a very fine-looking, cheerful, healthy blaze ; 
the difficulty is to prevent its petering out the mo- 
ment your back is turned. 

But the depths of woe are sounded and the limit 
of patience reached when you are forced to get break- 
fast in the dripping forest. After the chill of early 
dawn you are always reluctant in the best of cir- 
cumstances to leave your blankets, to fumble with 
numbed fingers for matches, to handle cold steel and 
slippery fish. But when every leaf, twig, sapling, and 
tree contains a douche of cold water ; when the wet- 
ness oozes about your moccasins from the soggy earth 
with every step you take ; when you look about you 
and realize that somehow, before you can get a mouth- 
ful to banish that before-breakfast ill-humor, you 
must brave cold water in an attempt to find enough 
fuel to cook with, then your philosophy and early 
religious training avail you little. The first ninety- 
nine times you are forced to do this you will proba- 
bly squirm circumspectly through the brush in a vain 
attempt to avoid shaking water down on yourself; 
you will resent each failure to do so, and at the end 
your rage will personify the wilderness for the pur- 
pose of one sweeping anathema. The hundredth 
time will bring you wisdom. You will do the anath- 
ema — rueful rather than enraged — from the tent 
opening. Then you will plunge boldly in and get 
wet. It is not pleasant, but it has to be done, and 
you will save much temper, not to speak of time. 

47 



THE FOREST 

Dick and I earned our diplomas at this sort of 
work. It rained twelve of the first fourteen days we 
were out. Towards the end of that two weeks I 
doubt if even an Indian could have discovered a 
dry stick of wood in the entire country. The land 
was of Laurentian rock formation, running in par- 
allel ridges of bare stone separated by hollows car- 
peted with a thin layer of earth. The ridges were 
naturally ill adapted to camping, and the cup hol- 
lows speedily filled up with water until they became 
most creditable little marshes. Often we hunted for 
an hour or so before we could find any sort of a spot 
to pitch our tent. As for a fire, it was a matter of 
chopping down dead trees large enough to have 
remained dry inside, of armfuls of birch bark, and 
of the patient drying out, by repeated ignition, of 
enough fuel to cook very simple meals. Of course 
we could have kept a big fire going easily enough, 
but we were traveling steadily and had not the time 
for that. In these trying circumstances Dick showed 
that, no matter how much of a tenderfoot he might 
be, he was game enough under stress. 

But to return to our pleasant afternoon. While 
you are consuming the supper you will hang over 
some water to heat for the dish-washing, and the 
dish-washing you will attend to the moment you 
have finished eating. Do not commit the fallacy of 
sitting down for a little rest. Better finish the job 
completely while you are about it. You will appre- 

48 



ON MAKING CAMP 

ciate leisure so much more later. In lack of a wash- 
rag you will find that a bunch of tall grass bent 
double makes an ideal swab. 

Now brush the flies from your tent, drop the mos- 
quito-proof lining, and enjoy yourself. The whole 
task, from first to last, has consumed but a little over 
an hour. And you are through for the day. In the 
woods, as nowhere else, you will earn your leisure 
only by forethought. Make no move until you 
know it follows the line of greatest economy. To 
putter is to wallow in endless desolation. If you 
cannot move directly and swiftly and certainly along 
the line of least resistance in everything you do, take 
a guide with you ; you are not of the woods people. 
You will never enjoy doing for yourself, for your 
days will be crammed with unending labor. 

It is but a little after seven. The long crimson 
shadows of the North Country are lifting across the 
aisles of the forest. You sit on a log, or lie on your 
back, and blow contented clouds straight up into 
the air. Nothing can disturb you now. The wil- 
derness is yours, for you have taken from it the 
essentials of primitive civilization, — shelter, warmth, 
and food. An hour ago a rainstorm would have 
been a minor catastrophe. Now you do not care. 
Blow high, blow low, you have made for yourself 
an abiding-place, so that the signs of the sky are 
less important to you than to the city dweller who 
wonders if he should take an umbrella. From your 

49 



THE FOREST 

doorstep you can look placidly out on the great un- 
known. The noises of the forest draw close about 
you their circle of mystery, but the circle cannot 
break upon you, for here you have conjured the 
homely sounds of kettle and crackling flame to keep 
ward. Thronging down through the twilight steal 
the jealous woodland shadows, awful in the sublimity 
of the Silent Places, but at the sentry outposts of 
your fire-lit trees they pause like wild animals, hesi- 
tating to advance. The wilderness, untamed, dread- 
ful at night, is all about ; but this one little spot you 
have reclaimed. Here is something before unknown 
to the eerie spirits of the woods. As you sleepily 
knock the ashes from the pipe, you look about on 
the familiar scene with accustomed satisfaction. You 
are at home. 



5° 



ON LYING AWAKE AT NIGHT 




ON LYING AWAKE AT NIGHT 

" Who hath lain alone to hear the wild goose cry ? " 

ABOUT once in so often you are due to lie 
awake at night. Why this is so I have never 
been able to discover. It apparently comes from no 
predisposing uneasiness of indigestion, no rashness 
in the matter of too much tea or tobacco, no excita- 
tion of unusual incident or stimulating conversation. 
In fact, you turn in with the expectation of rather 
a good night's rest. Almost at once the little noises 
of the forest grow larger, blend in the hollow big- 
ness of the first drowse ; your thoughts drift idly 
back and forth between reality and dream; when — 
snap! — you are broad awake ! 

Perhaps the reservoir of your vital forces is full 
to the overflow of a little waste ; or perhaps, more 
subtly, the great Mother insists thus that you enter 
the temple of her larger mysteries. 

For, unlike mere insomnia, lying awake at night 
in the woods is pleasant. The eager, nervous strain- 
ing for sleep gives way to a delicious indifference. 
You do not care. Your mind is cradled in an exqui- 

53 



THE FOREST 

site poppy-suspension of judgment and of thought. 
Impressions slip vaguely into your consciousness and 
as vaguely out again. Sometimes they stand stark 
and naked for your inspection ; sometimes they lose 
themselves in the mist of half-sleep. Always they 
lay soft velvet fingers on the drowsy imagination, so 
that in their caressing you feel the vaster spaces from 
which they have come. Peaceful - brooding your 
faculties receive. Hearing, sight, smell — all are 
preternaturally keen to whatever of sound and sight 
and woods perfume is abroad through the night; 
and yet at the same time active appreciation dozes, 
so these things lie on it sweet and cloying like fallen 
rose-leaves. 

In such circumstance you will hear what the voy- 
ageurs call the voices of the rapids. Many people 
never hear them at all. They speak very soft and 
low and distinct beneath the steady roar and dash- 
ing, beneath even the lesser tinklings and gurglings 
whose quality superimposes them over the louder 
sounds. They are like the tear-forms swimming 
across the field of vision, which disappear so quickly 
when you concentrate your sight to look at them, 
and which reappear so magically when again your 
gaze turns vacant. In the stillness of your hazy 
half-consciousness they speak ; when you bend your 
attention to listen, they are gone, and only the tumults 
and the tinklings remain. 

But in the moments of their audibility they are 

54 



ON LYING AWAKE AT NIGHT 

very distinct. Just as often an odor will wake all 
a vanished memory, so these voices, by the force of a 
large impressionism, suggest whole scenes. Far off 
are the cling-clang-cling of chimes and the swell-and- 
fall murmur of a multitude en fete, so that subtly 
you feel the gray old town, with its walls, the crowded 
market-place, the decent peasant crowd, the booths, 
the mellow church building with its bells, the warm, 
dust-moted sun. Or, in the pauses between the 
swish-dash-dashings of the waters, sound faint and 
clear voices singing intermittently, calls, distant notes 
of laughter, as though many canoes were working 
against the current — only the flotilla never gets any 
nearer, nor the voices louder. The voyageurs call 
these mist people the Huntsmen ; and look fright- 
ened. To each is his vision, according to his expe- 
rience. The nations of the earth whisper to their 
exiled sons through the voices of the rapids. Curi- 
ously enough, by all reports, they suggest always 
peaceful scenes — a harvest-field, a street fair, a Sun- 
day morning in a cathedral town, careless travelers 
— never the turmoils and struggles. Perhaps this is 
the great Mother's compensation in a harsh mode of 
life. 

Nothing is more fantastically unreal to tell about, 
nothing more concretely real to experience, than this 
undernote of the quick water. And when you do 
lie awake at night, it is always making its unobtru- 
sive appeal. Gradually its hypnotic spell works. 

55 



THE FOREST 

The distant chimes ring louder and nearer as you 
cross the borderland of sleep. And then outside the 
tent some little woods noise snaps the thread. An 
owl hoots, a whippoorwill cries, a twig cracks be- 
neath the cautious prowl of some night creature — 
at once the yellow sunlit French meadows puff away 
— you are staring at the blurred image of the moon 
spraying through the texture of your tent. 

The voices of the rapids have dropped into the 
background, as have the dashing noises of the stream. 
Through the forest is a great silence, but no stillness 
at all. The whippoorwill swings down and up the 
short curve of his regular song; over and over an 
owl says his rapid whoo, whoo, whoo. These, with 
the ceaseless dash of the rapids, are the web on which 
the night traces her more delicate embroideries of the 
unexpected. Distant crashes, single and impressive ; 
stealthy footsteps near at hand ; the subdued scratch- 
ing of claws ; a faint sniff I sniff I sniff I of inquiry ; 
the sudden clear tin-horn ko-ko-ko-bh of the little 
owl; the mournful, long-drawn-outcry of the loon, 
instinct with the spirit of loneliness; the ethereal 
call-note of the birds of passage high in the air; a 
-patter, patter, patter, among the dead leaves, imme- 
diately stilled ; and then at the last, from the thicket 
close at hand, the beautiful silver purity of the white- 
throated sparrow — the nightingale of the North — 
trembling with the ecstasy of beauty, as though a 
shimmering moonbeam had turned to sound; and 

56 





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1 



" At such a time you will meet with adventures " 



ON LYING AWAKE AT NIGHT 

all the while the blurred figure of the moon mount- 
ing to the ridge-line of your tent — these things 
combine subtly, until at last the great Silence of 
which they are a part overarches the night and 
draws you forth to contemplation. 

No beverage is more grateful than the cup of 
spring water you drink at such a time ; no moment 
more refreshing than that in which you look about 
you at the darkened forest. You have cast from you 
with the warm blanket the drowsiness of dreams. A 
coolness, physical and spiritual, bathes you from head 
to foot. All your senses are keyed to the last vibra- 
tions. You hear the littler night prowlers ; you 
glimpse the greater. A faint, searching woods per- 
fume of dampness greets your nostrils. And some- 
how, mysteriously, in a manner not to be understood, 
the forces of the world seem in suspense, as though 
a touch might crystallize infinite possibilities into 
infinite power and motion. But the touch lacks. 
The forces hover on the edge of action, unheeding 
the little noises. In all humbleness and awe, you 
are a dweller of the Silent Places. 

At such a time you will meet with adventures. 
One night we put fourteen inquisitive porcupines 
out of camp. Near McGregor's Bay I discovered in 
the large grass park of my camp-site nine deer, 
cropping the herbage like so many beautiful ghosts. 
A friend tells me of a fawn that every night used to 
sleep outside his tent and within a foot of his head, 

57 



THE FOREST 

probably by way of protection against wolves. Its 
mother had in all likelihood been killed. The in- 
stant my friend moved toward the tent opening the 
little creature would disappear, and it was always 
gone by earliest daylight. Nocturnal bears in search 
of pork are not uncommon. But even though your 
interest meets nothing but the bats and the woods 
shadows and the stars, that few moments of the 
sleeping world forces is a psychical experience to be 
gained in no other way. You cannot know the night 
by sitting up; she will sit up with you. Only by 
coming into her presence from the borders of sleep 
can you meet her face to face in her intimate mood. 

The night wind from the river, or from the open 
spaces of the wilds, chills you after a time. You 
begin to think of your blankets. In a few moments 
you roll yourself in their soft wool. Instantly it is 
morning. 

And, strange to say, you have not to pay by going 
through the day unrefreshed. You may feel like 
turning in at eight instead of nine, and you may fall 
asleep with unusual promptitude, but your journey 
will begin clear-headedly, proceed springily, and end 
with much in reserve. No languor, no dull head- 
ache, no exhaustion, follows your experience. For 
this once your two hours of sleep have been as effect- 
ive as nine. 



58 



THE 'LUNGE 




VI 
THE LUNGE 

" Do you know the chosen water where the ouananiche is waiting ? " 

DICK and I traveled in a fifteen-foot wooden 
canoe, with grub, duffel, tent, and Deuce, the 
black-and-white setter dog. As a consequence we 
were pretty well down toward the water line, for we 
had not realized that a wooden canoe would carry so 
little weight for its length in comparison with a birch- 
bark. A good heavy sea we could ride — with pro- 
per management and a little bailing; but sloppy 
waves kept us busy. 

Deuce did not like it at all. He was a dog old in 
the wisdom of experience. It had taken him just 
twenty minutes to learn all about canoes. After a 
single tentative trial he jumped lightly to the very 
centre of his place, with the lithe caution of a cat. 
Then if the water happened to be smooth, he would 
sit gravely on his haunches, or would rest his chin on 
the gunwale to contemplate the passing landscape. 
But in rough weather he crouched directly over the 
keel, his nose between his paws, and tried not to 
dodge when the cold water dashed in on him. Deuce 

61 



THE FOREST 

was a true woodsman in that respect. Discomfort he 
always bore with equanimity, and he must often have 
been very cold and very cramped. 

For just over a week we had been traveling in 
open water, and the elements had not been kind to 
us at all. We had crept up under rock-cliff points ; 
had weathered the rips of white water to shelter on 
the other side; had struggled across open spaces 
where each wave was singly a problem to fail in 
whose solution meant instant swamping ; had bailed, 
and schemed, and figured, and carried, and sworn, 
and tried again, and succeeded with about two cup- 
fuls to spare, until we as well as Deuce had grown a 
little tired of it. For the lust of travel was on us. 

The lust of travel is a very real disease. It usually 
takes you when you have made up your mind that 
there is no hurry. Its predisposing cause is a chart 
or map, and its main symptom is the feverish delight 
with which you check off the landmarks of your 
journey. A fair wind of some force is absolutely 
fatal. With that at your back you cannot stop. 
Good fishing, fine scenery, interesting bays, reputed 
game, even camps where friends might be visited — 
all pass swiftly astern. Hardly do you pause for 
lunch at noon. The mad joy of putting country be- 
hind you eats all other interests. You recover only 
when you have come to your journey's end a week 
too early, and must then search out new voyages to 
fill in the time. 

62 



THE 'LUNGE 

All this morning we had been bucking a strong 
north wind. Fortunately, the shelter of a string of 
islands had given us smooth water enough, but the 
heavy gusts sometimes stopped us as effectively as 
though we had butted solid land. Now about noon 
we came to the last island, and looked out on a five- 
mile stretch of tumbling seas. We landed the canoe 
and mounted a high rock. 

" Can't make it like this," said I. " I '11 take the 
outfit over and land it, and come back for you and 
the dog. Let 's see that chart." 

We hid behind the rock and spread out the map. 

" Four miles," measured Dick. " It 's going to be 
a terror." 

We looked at each other vaguely, suddenly tired. 

"We can't camp here — at this time of day," 
objected Dick, to our unspoken thoughts. 

And then the map gave him an inspiration. 
" Here 's a little river," ruminated Dick, " that goes 
to a little lake, and then there 's another little river 
that flows from the lake, and comes out about ten 
miles above here." 

" It 's a good thirty miles," I objected. 

" What of it ? " asked Dick, calmly. 

So the fever-lust of travel broke. We turned to 
the right behind the last island, searched out the reed- 
grown opening to the stream, and paddled serenely 
and philosophically against the current. Deuce sat 
up and yawned with a mighty satisfaction. 

63 



THE FOREST 

We had been bending our heads to the demon of 
wind ; our ears had been filled with his shoutings, 
our eyes blinded with tears, our breath caught away 
from us, our muscles strung to the fiercest endeavor. 
Suddenly we found ourselves between the ranks of 
tall forest trees, bathed in a warm sunlight, gliding 
like a feather from one grassy bend to another of the 
laziest little stream that ever hesitated as to which 
way the grasses of its bed should float. As for the 
wind, it was lost somewhere away up high, where we 
could hear it muttering to itself about something. 

The woods leaned over the fringe of bushes cool 
and green and silent. Occasionally through tiny 
openings we caught instant impressions of straight 
column-trunks and transparent shadows. Miniature 
grass marshes jutted out from the bends of the little 
river. We idled along as with a homely rustic com- 
panion through the aloofness of patrician multitudes. 

Every bend offered us charming surprises. Some- 
times a muskrat swam hastily in a pointed furrow of 
ripple ; vanishing wings, jbarely sensed in the flash, 
left us staring ; stealthy ' withdrawals of creatures, 
whose presence we realized only in the fact of those 
withdrawals, snared our eager interest; porcupines 
rattled and rustled importantly and regally from the 
water's edge to the woods; herons, ravens, an oc- 
casional duck, croaked away at our approach ; thrice 
we surprised eagles, once a tassel-eared Canada lynx. 
Or, if all else lacked, we still experienced the little 

64 



THE 'LUNGE 

thrill of pleased novelty over the disclosure of a 
group of silvery birches on a knoll; a magnificent 
white pine towering over the beech and maple forest ; 
the unexpected aisle of a long, straight stretch of the 
little river. 

Deuce approved thoroughly. He stretched him- 
self and yawned and shook off the water, and glanced 
at me open-mouthed with doggy good-nature, and 
set himself to acquiring a conscientious olfactory 
knowledge of both banks of the river. I do not 
doubt he knew a great deal more about it than we did. 
Porcupines aroused his especial enthusiasm. Inci- 
dentally, two days later he returned to camp after an 
expedition of his own, bristling as to the face with 
that animal's barbed weapons. Thenceforward his 
interest waned. 

We ascended the charming little river two or three 
miles. At a sharp bend to the east a huge sheet of 
rock sloped from a round grass knoll sparsely planted 
with birches directly down into a pool. Two or three 
tree-trunks jammed directly opposite had formed a 
sort of half dam under which the water lay dark. A 
tiny grass meadow forty feet in diameter narrowed 
the stream to half its width. 

We landed. Dick seated himself on the shelving 
rock. I put my fish-rod together. Deuce disap- 
peared. 

Deuce always disappeared whenever we landed. 
With nose down, hind-quarters well tucked under 

65 



THE FOREST 

him, ears flying, he quartered the forest at high speed, 
investigating every nook and cranny of it for the 
radius of a quarter of a mile. When he had quite 
satisfied himself that we were safe for the moment, he 
would return to the fire, where he would lie, six inches 
of pink tongue vibrating with breathlessness, beauti- 
ful in the consciousness of virtue. Dick generally sat 
on a rock and thought. I generally fished. 

After a time Deuce returned. I gave up flies, 
spoons, phantom minnows, artificial frogs, and cray- 
fish. As Dick continued to sit on the rock and think, 
we both joined him. The sun was very warm and 
grateful, and I am sure we both acquired an added 
respect for Dick's judgment. 

Just when it happened neither of us was afterwards 
able to decide. Perhaps Deuce knew. But sud- 
denly, as often a figure appears in a cinematograph, 
the diminutive meadow thirty feet away contained 
two deer. They stood knee deep in the grass, wag- 
ging their little tails in impatience of the flies. 

" Look a' there ! " stammered Dick aloud. 

Deuce sat up on his haunches. 

I started for my camera. 

The deer did not seem to be in the slightest degree 
alarmed. They pointed four big ears in our direc- 
tion, ate a few leisurely mouthfuls of grass, sauntered 
to the stream for a drink of water, wagged their little 
tails some more, and quietly faded into the cool 
shadows of the forest. 

66 



THE 'LUNGE 

An hour later we ran out into reeds, and so to the 
lake. It was a pretty lake, forest-girt. Across the 
distance we made out a moving object which shortly 
resolved itself into a birch canoe. The canoe proved 
to contain an Indian, an Indian boy of about ten 
years, a black dog, and a bundle. When within a 
few rods of each other we ceased paddling and drifted 
by with the momentum. The Indian was a fine- 
looking man of about forty, his hair bound with a 
red fillet, his feet incased in silk-worked moccasins, 
but otherwise dressed in white men's garments. He 
smoked a short pipe, and contemplated us gravely. 

" Bo' jou', bo' jou'," we called in the usual double- 
barreled North Country salutation. 

" Bo' jou', bo' jou'," he replied. 

" Kee-gons ? " we inquired as to the fishing in the 
lake. 

" Ah-hah," he assented. 

We drifted by each other without further speech. 
When the decent distance of etiquette separated us, 
we resumed our paddles. 

I produced a young cable terminated by a tremen- 
dous spoon and a solid brass snell as thick as a tele- 
graph wire. We had laid in this formidable imple- 
ment in hopes of a big muscallunge. It had been 
trailed for days at a time. We had become used to 
its vibration, which actually seemed to communicate 
itself to every fiber of the light canoe. Every once 
in a while we would stop with a jerk that would 

67 



THE FOREST 

nearly snap our heads off. Then we would know 
we had hooked the American continent. We had 
become used to that also. It generally happened 
when we attempted a little burst of speed. So when 
the canoe brought up so violently that all our tin- 
ware rolled on Deuce, Dick was merely disgusted. 

" There she goes again," he grumbled. " You 've 
hooked Canada." 

Canada held quiescent for about three seconds. 
Then it started due south. 

" Suffering serpents ! " shrieked Dick. 

" Paddle, you sulphurated idiot ! " yelled I. 

It was most interesting. All I had to do was to 
hang on and try to stay in the boat. Dick paddled 
and fumed and splashed water and got more excited. 
Canada dragged us bodily backward. 

Then Canada changed his mind and started in our 
direction. I was plenty busy taking in slack, so I 
did not notice Dick. Dick was absolutely demented. 
His mind automatically reacted in the direction of 
paddling. He paddled, blindly, frantically. Canada 
came surging in, his mouth open, his wicked eyes 
flaming, a tremendous indistinct body lashing foam. 
Dick glanced once over his shoulder, and let out a 
frantic howl. 

" You 've got the sea serpent ! " he shrieked. 

I turned to fumble for the pistol. We were 
headed directly for a log stranded on shore, and about 
ten feet from it. 

68 



THE 'LUNGE 

" Dick ! " I yelled in warning. 

He thrust his paddle out forward just in time. 
The stout maple bent and cracked. The canoe hit 
with a bump that threw us forward. I returned to 
the young cable. It came in limp and slack. 

We looked at each other sadly. 

" No use," sighed Dick at last. " They 've never 
invented the words, and we 'd upset if we kicked 
the dog." 

I had the end of the line in my hands. 

" Look here! " I cried. That thick brass wire had 
been as cleanly bitten through as though it had been 
cut with clippers. " He must have caught sight of 
you," said I. 

Dick lifted up his voice in lamentation. " You 
had four feet of him out of water," he wailed, " and 
there was a lot more." 

" If you had kept cool," said I, severely, "we 
should n't have lost him. You don't want to get 
rattled in an emergency. There 's no sense in it." 

" What were you going to do with that ? " asked 
Dick, pointing to where I had laid the pistol. 

" I was going to shoot him in the head," I replied, 
with dignity. "It's the best way to land them." 

Dick laughed disagreeably. I looked down. At 
my side lay our largest iron spoon. 

We skirted the left hand side of the lake in silence. 
Far out from shore the water was ruffled where the 
wind swept down, but with us it was as still and calm 

69 



THE FOREST 

as the forest trees that looked over into it. After a 
time we turned short to the left through a very nar- 
row passage between two marshy shores, and so, after 
a sharp bend of but a few hundred feet, came into 
the other river. 

This was a wide stream, smoothly hurrying, with- 
out rapids or tumult. The forest had drawn to either 
side to let us pass. Here were the wilder reaches 
after the intimacies of the little river. Across stretches 
of marsh we could see an occasional great blue heron 
standing mid-leg deep. Long strings of ducks strug- 
gled quacking from invisible pools. The faint marsh 
odor saluted our nostrils from the point where the 
lily-pads flashed broadly, ruffling in the wind. We 
dropped out the smaller spoon and masterfully landed 
a five-pound pickerel. Even Deuce brightened. He 
cared nothing for raw fish, but he knew their pos- 
sibilities. Towards evening we entered the hilly 
country, and so at the last turned to the left into a 
sand cove where grew maples and birches in beauti- 
ful park order under a hill. There we pitched camp, 
and, as the flies lacked, built a friendship-fire about 
which to foregather when the day was done. 

Dick still vocally regretted the muscallunge as the 
largest fish since Jonah. So I told him of my big 
bear. 

One day, late in the summer, I was engaged in 
packing some supplies along an old fur trail north of 
Lake Superior. I had accomplished one back-load, 

70 



THE 'LUNGE 

and with empty straps was returning to the cache for 
another. The trail at one point emerged into and 
crossed an open park some hundreds of feet in dia- 
meter, in which the grass grew to the height of the 
knee. When I was about halfway across, a black 
bear arose to his hind legs not ten feet from me and 
remarked Woof! in a loud tone of voice. Now, if 
a man were to say woof! to you unexpectedly, even 
in the formality of an Italian garden or the accus- 
tomedness of a city street, you would be somewhat 
startled. So I went to camp. There I told them 
about the bear. I tried to be conservative in my 
description, because I did not wish to be accused 
of exaggeration. My impression of the animal was 
that he and a spruce-tree that grew near enough for 
ready comparison were approximately of the same 
stature. We returned to the grass park. After some 
difficulty we found a clear footprint. It was a little 
larger than that made by a good-sized coon. 

"So, you see," I admonished, didactically, "that 
'lunge probably was not quite so large as you 
thought." 

" It may have been a Chinese bear," said Dick, 
dreamily — "a Chinese lady bear, of high degree." 

I gave him up. 



7i 



ON OPEN- WATER CANOE TRAVELING 




VII 
ON OPEN- WATER CANOE TRAVELING 

"It is there that I am going, with an extra hand to bail her — 
Just one single long-shore loafer that I know. 
He can take his chance of drowning while I sail and sail and sail her, 
For the Red Gods call me out and I must go." 

THE following morning the wind had died, but 
had been succeeded by a heavy pall of fog. 
After we had felt our way beyond the mouth of the 
river we were forced to paddle northwest by north, 
in blind reliance on our compass. Sounds there were 
none. Involuntarily we lowered our voices. The 
inadvertent click of a paddle against the gunwale 
seemed to desecrate a foreordained stillness. 

Occasionally to the right hand or the left we made 
out faint shadow-pictures of wooded islands that en- 
dured but a moment and then deliberately faded into 
whiteness. They formed on the view exactly as an 
image develops on a photographic plate. Some- 
times a faint lisp-lisp-lisp of tiny waves against a shore 
nearer than it seemed cautioned us anew not to break 
the silence. Otherwise we were alone, intruders, 
suffered in the presence of a brooding nature only as 
long as we refrained from disturbances. 

75 



THE FOREST 

Then at noon the vapors began to eddy, to open 
momentarily in revelation of vivid green glimpses, 
to stream down the rising wind. Pale sunlight 
dashed fitfully across us like a shower. Somewhere 
in the invisibility a duck quacked. Deuce awoke, 
looked about him, and yow-yow-yowed in doggish re- 
lief. Animals understand thoroughly these subtleties 
of nature. 

In half an hour the sun was strong, the air clear 
and sparkling, and a freshening wind was certifying 
our prognostications of a lively afternoon. 

A light canoe will stand almost anything in the 
way of a sea, although you may find it impossible 
sometimes to force it in the direction you wish to go. 
A loaded canoe will weather a great deal more than 
you might think. However, only experience in 
balance and in the nature of waves will bring you 
safely across a stretch of whitecaps. 

With the sea dead ahead you must not go too fast ; 
otherwise you will dip water over the bow. You 
must trim the craft absolutely on an even keel. 
Otherwise the comb of the wave, too light to lift you, 
will slop in over one gunwale or the other. You 
must be perpetually watching your chance to gain a 
foot or so between the heavier seas. 

With the sea over one bow you must paddle on 
the leeward side. When the canoe mounts a wave, 
you must allow the crest to throw the bow off a trifle, 
but the moment it starts down the other slope you 

76 



' ' The wind . . . had been succeeded by a heavy pall of fog ' ' 



P 



r. t 



ON OPEN- WATER CANOE TRAVELING 

must twist your paddle sharply to regain the direction 
of your course. The careening tendency of this twist 
you must counteract by a corresponding twist of your 
body in the other direction. Then the hollow will 
allow you two or three strokes wherewith to assure a 
little progress. The double twist at the very crest of 
the wave must be very delicately performed, or you 
will ship water the whole length of your craft. 

With the sea abeam you must simply paddle 
straight ahead. The adjustment is to be accomplished 
entirely by the poise of the body. You must pre- 
vent the capsize of your canoe when clinging to the 
angle of a wave by leaning to one side. The crucial 
moment, of course, is that during which the peak of 
the wave slips under you. In case of a breaking 
comber, thrust the flat of your paddle deep in the 
water to prevent an upset, and lean well to leeward, 
thus presenting the side and half the bottom of the 
canoe to the shock of water. Your recovery must 
be instant, however. If you lean a second too long, 
over you go. This sounds more difficult than it is. 
After a time you do it instinctively, as a skater 
balances. 

With the sea over the quarter you have merely 
to take care that the waves do not slew you around 
sidewise, and that the canoe does not dip water on 
one side or the other under the stress of your twists 
with the paddle. Dead astern is perhaps the most 
difficult of all, for the reason that you must watch 

77 



THE FOREST 

both gunwales at once, and must preserve an abso- 
lutely even keel in spite of the fact that it generally 
requires your utmost strength to steer. 

In really heavy weather one man only can do any 
work. The other must be content to remain pas- 
senger, and he must be trained to absolute immo- 
bility. No matter how dangerous a careen the canoe 
may take, no matter how much good cold water may 
pour in over his legs, he must resist his tendency to 
shift his weight. The entire issue depends on the 
delicacy of the steersman's adjustments, so he must 
be given every chance. 

The main difficulty rests in the fact that such 
canoeing is a good deal like air-ship travel — there 
is not much opportunity to learn by experience. In 
a four-hour run across an open bay you will encounter 
somewhat over a thousand waves, no two of which 
are exactly alike, and any one of which can fill you 
up only too easily if it is not correctly met. Your 
experience is called on to solve instantly and practi- 
cally a thousand problems. No breathing-space in 
which to recover is permitted you between them. 
At the end of the four hours you awaken to the fact 
that your eyes are strained from intense concentra- 
tion, and that you taste copper. 

Probably nothing, however, can more effectively 
wake you up to the last fiber of your physical, intel- 
lectual, and nervous being. You are filled with an 
exhilaration. Every muscle, strung tight, answers 

73 



ON OPEN- WATER CANOE TRAVELING 

immediately and accurately to the slightest hint. You 
quiver all over with restrained energy. Your mind 
thrusts behind you the problem of the last wave as 
soon as solved, and leaps with insistent eagerness to 
the next. You attain that super-ordinary condition 
when your faculties react instinctively, like a ma- 
chine. It is a species of intoxication. After a 
time you personify each wave ; you grapple with it 
as with a personal adversary ; you exult as, beaten 
and broken, it hisses away to leeward. "Go it, 
you son of a gun ! " you shout. " Ah, you would, 
would you ! think you can, do you ? " and in the 
roar and rush of wind and water you crouch like a 
boxer on the defense, parrying the blows, but ready 
at the slightest opening to gain a stroke of the 
paddle. 

In such circumstances you have not the leisure to 
consider distance. You are too busily engaged in 
slaughtering waves to consider your rate of progress. 
The fact that slowly you are pulling up on your 
objective point does not occur to you until you are 
within a few hundred yards of it. Then, unless you 
are careful, you are undone. 

Probably the most difficult thing of all to learn is 
that the waves to be encountered in the last hundred 
yards of an open sweep are exactly as dangerous as 
those you dodged so fearfully four miles from shore. 
You are so nearly in that you unconsciously relax 
your efforts. Calmly, almost contemptuously, a big 

79 



THE FOREST 

roller rips along your gunwale. You are wrecked 
— fortunately within easy swimming distance. But 
that does n't save your duffel. Remember this : be 
just as careful with the very last wave as you were 
with the others. Get inside before you draw that 
deep breath of relief. 

Strangely enough, in out-of-door sports, where it 
would seem that convention would rest practically 
at the zero point, the bugbear of good form, although 
mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the directed 
practicality. The average man is wedded to his 
theory. He has seen a thing done in a certain way, 
and he not only always does it that way himself, but 
he is positively unhappy at seeing any one else em- 
ploying a different method. From the swing at 
golf to the manner of lighting a match in the wind, 
this truism applies. I remember once hearing a 
long argument with an Eastern man on the question 
of the English riding-seat in the Western country. 

"Your method is all very well," said the West- 
erner, " for where it came from. In England they 
ride to hunt, so they need a light saddle and very 
short stirrups set well forward. That helps them in 
jumping. But it is most awkward. Out here you 
want your stirrups very long and directly under you, 
so your legs hang loose, and you depend on your 
balance and the grip of your thighs — not your 
knees. It is less tiring, and better sense, and infinitely 
more graceful, for it more nearly approximates the 

80 



ON OPEN- WATER CANOE TRAVELING 

bareback seat. Instead of depending on stirrups, 
you are part of the horse. You follow his every 
movement. And as for your rising trot, I 'd like to 
see you accomplish it safely on our mountain trails 
where the trot is the only gait practicable, unless you 
take forever to get anywhere." To all of which the 
Easterner found no rebuttal except the, to him, en- 
tirely efficient plea that his own method was good 
form. 

Now, of course, it is very pleasant to do things 
always accurately, according to the rules of the game, 
and if you are out merely for sport, perhaps it is as 
well to stick to them. But utility is another matter. 
Personally, I do not care at all to kill trout unless 
by the fly ; but when we need meat and they do not 
need flies, I never hesitate to offer them any kind 
of a doodle-bug they may fancy. I have even, at a 
pinch, clubbed them to death in a shallow, land- 
locked pool. Times will come in your open-water 
canoe experience when you will pull into your shel- 
ter half full of water, when you will be glad of the 
fortuity of a chance cross-wave to help you out, when 
sheer blind luck, or main strength and awkwardness, 
will be the only reasons you can honestly give for an 
arrival, and a battered and disheveled arrival at that. 
Do not, therefore, repine, or bewail your awkward- 
ness, or indulge in undue self-accusations of " tender- 
foot." Method is nothing ; the arrival is the impor- 
tant thing. You are traveling, and if you can make 



THE FOREST 

time by nearly swamping yourself, or by dragging 
your craft across a point, or by taking any other base 
advantage of the game's formality, by all means do 
so. Deuce used to solve the problem of comfort by 
drinking the little pool of cold water in which he 
sometimes was forced to lie. In the woods, when a 
thing is to be done, do not consider how you have 
done it, or how you have seen it done, or how you 
think it ought to be done, but how it can be accom- 
plished. Absolute fluidity of expedient, perfect 
adaptability, is worth a dozen volumes of theoretical 
knowledge. " If you can't talk," goes the Western 
expression, "raise a yell; if you can't yell, make 
signs; if you can't make signs, wave a bush." 

And do not be too ready to take advice as to what 
you can or cannot accomplish, even from the woods 
people. Of course the woods Indians or the voy- 
ageurs know all about canoes, and you would do 
well to listen to them. But the mere fact that your 
interlocutor lives in the forest, while you normally 
inhabit the towns, does not necessarily give him 
authority. A community used to horses looks with 
horror on the instability of all water-craft less solid 
than canal-boats. Canoemen stand in awe of the 
bronco. The fishermen of the Georgian Bay, accus- 
tomed to venture out with their open sailboats in 
weather that forces the big lake schooners to shelter, 
know absolutely nothing about canoes. Dick and I 
made an eight-mile run from the Fox Island to Killar- 

82 



ON OPEN-WATER CANOE TRAVELING 

ney in a trifling sea, to be cheered during our stay at 
the latter place by doleful predictions of an early 
drowning. And this from a seafaring community. It 
knew all about boats; it knew nothing about canoes ; 
and yet the unthinking might have been influenced 
by the advice of these men simply because they 
had been brought up on the water. The point is ob- 
vious. Do not attempt a thing unless you are sure 
of yourself; but do not relinquish it merely because 
some one else is not sure of you. 

The best way to learn is with a bathing-suit. Keep 
near shore, and try everything. Don't attempt the 
real thing until your handling in a heavy sea has be- 
come as instinctive as snap-shooting or the steps of 
dancing. Remain on the hither side of caution when 
you start out. Act at first as though every wavelet 
would surely swamp you. Extend the scope of 
your operations very gradually, until you know just 
what you can do. Never get careless. Never take 
any real chances. That 's all. 



83 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 




VIII 
THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

AS we progressed, the country grew more and 
more solemnly aloof. In the Southland is a 
certain appearance of mobility, lent by the deciduous 
trees, the warm sun, the intimate nooks in which 
grow the commoner homely weeds and flowers, the 
abundance of bees and musical insects, the childhood 
familiarity of the well-known birds, even the plea- 
santly fickle aspects of the skies. But the North 
wraps itself in a mantle of awe. Great hills rest not 
so much in the stillness of sleep as in the calm of a 
mighty comprehension. The pines, rank after rank, 
file after file, are always trooping somewhere, up the 
slope, to pause at the crest before descending on the 
other side into the unknown. Bodies of water ex- 
actly of the size, shape, and general appearance we 
are accustomed to see dotted with pleasure craft and 
bordered with wharves, summer cottages, pavilions, 
and hotels, accentuate by that very fact a solitude 
that harbors only a pair of weirdly laughing loons. 
Like the hills, these lakes are lying in a deep, still 
repose, but a repose that somehow suggests the com- 

87 



THE FOREST 

prehending calm of those behind the veil. The whole 
country seems to rest in a suspense of waiting. A 
shot breaks the stillness for an instant, but its very 
memory is shadowy a moment after the echoes die. 
Inevitably the traveler feels thrust in upon himself 
by a neutrality more deadly than open hostility would 
be. Hostility at least supposes recognition of his 
existence, a rousing of forces to oppose him. This 
ignores. One can no longer wonder at the taciturnity 
of the men who dwell here ; nor does one fail to grasp 
the eminent suitability to the country of its Indian 
name — the Silent Places. 

Even the birds, joyful, lively, commonplace little 
people that they are, draw some of this aloofness to 
themselves. The North is full of the homelier singers. 
A dozen species of warblers lisp music-box phrases, 
two or three sparrows whistle a cheerful repertoire, 
the nuthatches and chickadees toot away in blissful 
bourgeoisie. And yet, somehow, that very circum- 
stance thrusts the imaginative voyager outside the 
companionship of their friendliness. In the face of 
the great gods they move with accustomed famil- 
iarity. Somehow they possess in their little expe- 
rience that which explains the mystery, so that they 
no longer stand in its awe. Their every-day lives are 
spent under the shadow of the temple whither you 
dare not bend your footsteps. The intimacy of oc- 
cult things isolates also these wise little birds. 

The North speaks, however, only in the voices of 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

three — the two thrushes, and the white-throated spar- 
row. You must hear these each at his proper time. 

The hermit thrush you will rarely see. But late 
some afternoon, when the sun is lifting along the 
trunks of the hardwood forest, if you are very lucky 
and very quiet, you will hear him far in the depths 
of the blackest swamps. Musically expressed, his 
song is very much like that of the wood thrush — 
three cadenced liquid notes, a quivering pause, then 
three more notes of another phrase, and so on. But 
the fineness of its quality makes of it an entirely dif- 
ferent performance. If you symbolize the hermit 
thrush by the flute, you must call the wood thrush 
a chime of little tinkling bells. One is a rendition ; 
the other the essence of liquid music. An effect of 
gold-embroidered richness, of depth going down to 
the very soul of things, a haunting suggestion of 
having touched very near to the source of tears, a 
conviction that the just interpretation of the song 
would be an equally just interpretation of black 
woods, deep shadows, cloistered sunlight, brooding 
hills — these are the subtle and elusive impressions 
you will receive in the middle of the ancient forest. 

The olive-backed thrush you will enjoy after your 
day's work is quite finished. You will see him 
through the tobacco haze, perched on a limb against 
the evening sky. He utters a loud, joyful chirp ; 
pauses for the attention he thus solicits, and then 
deliberately runs up five mellow double notes, end- 

89 



THE FOREST 

ing with a metallic " ting chee chee chee " that 
sounds as though it had been struck on a triangle. 
Then a silence of exactly nine seconds and repeat. 
As regularly as clock-work this performance goes on. 
Time him as often as you will, you can never con- 
vict him of a second's variation. And he is so op- 
timistic and willing, and his notes are so golden with 
the yellow of sunshine ! 

The white-throated sparrow sings nine distinct 
variations of the same song. He may sing more, 
but that is all I have counted. He inhabits woods, 
berry-vines, brules, and clearings. Ordinarily he is 
cheerful, and occasionally aggravating. One man I 
knew, he drove nearly crazy. To that man he was 
always saying, '■''And he never heard the man say 

drink and the ." Towards the last my friend used 

wildly to offer him a thousand dollars if he would, 
if he onlv would, finish that sentence. But occasion- 
ally, in just the proper circumstances, he forgets his 
stump corners, his vines, his jolly sunlight, and his 
delightful bugs to become the intimate voice of the 
wilds. It is night, very still, very dark. The sub- 
dued murmur of the forest ebbs and flows with the 
voices of the furtive folk, an undertone fearful to 
break the night calm. Suddenly across the dusk of 
silence flashes a single thread of silver, vibrating, 
trembling with some unguessed ecstasy of emotion : 
" Ah ! poor Canada Canada Canada Canada ! " it 
mourns passionately, and falls silent. That is all. 

90 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

You will hear at various times other birds pecu- 
liarly of the North. Loons alternately calling and 
uttering their maniac laughter; purple finches or 
some of the pine sparrows warbling high and clear ; 
the winter wren, whose rapturous ravings never fail 
to strike the attention of the dullest passer; all these 
are exclusively Northern voices, and each expresses 
some phase or mood of the Silent Places. But none 
symbolizes as do the three. And when first you hear 
one of them after an absence, you are satisfied that 
things are right in the world, for the North Coun- 
try's spirit is as it was. 

Now ensued a spell of calm weather, with a film 
of haze over the sky. The water lay like quicksil- 
ver, heavy and inert. Towards afternoon it became 
opalescent. The very substance of the liquid itself 
seemed impregnated with dyes ranging in shade 
from wine color to the most delicate lilac. Through 
a smoke veil the sun hung, a ball of red, while be- 
neath every island, every rock, every tree, every wild 
fowl floating idly in a medium apparently too deli- 
cate for its support, lurked the beautiful crimson 
shadows of the North. 

Hour after hour, day after day, we slipped on. 
Point after point, island after island, presented itself 
silently to our inspection and dropped quietly astern. 
The beat of paddles fitted monotonously into the 
almost portentous stillness. It seemed that we might 
be able to go on thus forever, lapped in the dream 

9 1 



THE FOREST 

of some forgotten magic that had stricken breathless 
the life of the world. And then, suddenly, three 
weeks on our journey, we came to a town. 

It was not the typical fur town of the Far North, 
but it lay at the threshold. A single street, worn 
smooth by the feet of men and dogs, but innocent of 
hoofs, fronted the channel. A board walk, elevated 
against the snows, bordered a row of whitewashed 
log and frame houses, each with its garden of brilliant 
flowers. A dozen wharves of various sizes, over 
whose edges peeped the double masts of Mackinaw 
boats, spoke of a fishing community. Between the 
roofs one caught glimpses of a low sparse woods and 
some thousand-foot hills beyond. We subsequently 
added the charm of isolation in learning that the 
nearest telegraph line was fifteen miles distant, while 
the railroad passed some fifty miles away. 

Dick immediately went wild. It was his first 
glimpse of the mixed peoples. A dozen loungers, 
handsome, careless, graceful with the inimitable ele- 
gance of the half-breed's leisure, chatted, rolled cigar- 
ettes, and surveyed with heavy-eyed indolence such 
of the town as could be viewed from the shade in 
which they lay. Three girls, in whose dark cheeks 
glowed a rich French comeliness, were comparing 
purchases near the store. A group of rivermen, spike- 
booted, short-trousered, reckless of air, with their 
little round hats over one ear, sat chair-tilted outside 
the " hotel." Across the dividing fences of two of the 

92 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

blazoned gardens a pair of old crones gossiped under 
their breaths. Some Indians smoked silently at the 
edge of one of the docks. In the distance of the 
street's end a French priest added the quaintness of 
his cassock to the exotic atmosphere of the scene. 
At once a pack of the fierce sledge-dogs left their 
foraging for the offal of the fisheries, to bound chal- 
lenging in the direction of poor Deuce. That high- 
bred animal fruitlessly attempted to combine dignity 
with a discretionary lurking between our legs. We 
made demonstrations with sticks, and sought out the 
hotel, for it was about time to eat. 

We had supper at a table with three Forest Ran- 
gers, two lumber-jacks, and a cat-like handsome 
" breed " whose business did not appear. Then we 
lit up and strolled about to see what we could see. 

On the text of a pair of brass knuckles hanging 
behind the hotel bar I embroidered many experiences 
with the lumber-jack. I told of a Wisconsin town 
where an enforced wait of five hours enabled me to 
establish the proportion of fourteen saloons out of a 
total of twenty frame buildings. I descanted craftily 
on the character of the woodsman out of the woods 
and in the right frame of mind for deviltry. I related 
how Jack Boyd, irritated beyond endurance at the 
annoyances of a stranger, finally with the flat of his 
hand boxed the man's head so mightily that he 
whirled around twice and sat down. "Now," said 
Jack, softly, "be more careful, my friend, or next 

93 



THE FOREST 

time I'll hit you." Or of a little Irishman who 
shouted to his friends about to pull a big man from 
pounding the life quite out of him, " Let him alone ! 
let him alone ! I may be on top myself in a few 
minutes ! " And of Dave Walker, who fought to a 
standstill with his bare fists alone five men who had 
sworn to kill him. And again of that doughty knight 
of the peavie, who, when attacked by an axe, waved 
aside interference with the truly dauntless cry, "Leave 
him be, boys ; there 's an axe between us ! " 

I tried to sketch, too, the drive, wherein a dozen 
times in an hour these men face death with a smile 
or a curse — the raging, untamed river, the fierce 
rush of the logs, the cool little human beings poising 
with a certain contemptuous preciosity on the edge 
of destruction as they herd their brutish multitudes. 

There was Jimmy, the river boss, who could not 
swim a stroke, and who was incontinently swept over 
a dam and into the boiling back-set of the eddy be- 
low. Three times, gasping, strangling, drowning, he 
was carried in the wide swirl of the circle, sometimes 
under, sometimes on top. Then his knee touched a 
sand-bar, and he dragged himself painfully ashore. 
He coughed up a quantity of water, and gave vent 
to his feelings over a miraculous escape. " Damn it 
all ! " he wailed, " I lost my peavie ! " 

" On the Paint River drive one spring," said I, " a 
jam formed that extended up river some three miles. 
The men were working at the breast of it, some 

94 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

underneath, some on top. After a time the jam ap- 
parently broke, pulled downstream a hundred feet or 
so, and plugged again. Then it was seen that only 
a small section had moved, leaving the main body 
still jammed, so that between the two sections lay a 
narrow stretch of open water. Into this open water 
one of the men had fallen. Before he could recover, 
the second or tail section of the jam started to pull. 
Apparently nothing could prevent him from being 
crushed. A man called Sam — I don't know his last 
name — ran down the tail of the first section, across 
the loose logs bobbing in the open water, seized the 
victim of the accident by the collar, desperately scaled 
the face of the moving jam, and reached the top just 
as the two sections ground together with the brutish 
noise of wrecking timbers. It was a magnificent 
rescue. Any but these men of iron would have ad- 
journed for thanks and congratulations. Still retaining 
his hold on the other man's collar, Sam twisted him 
about and delivered a vigorous kick. ' There, damn 
you ! ' said he. That was all. They fell to work at 
once to keep the jam moving." 

I instanced, too, some of the feats of river-work 
these men could perform. Of how Jack Boyd has 
been known to float twenty miles without shifting his 
feet, on a log so small that he carried it to the water 
on his shoulder ; of how a dozen rivermen, one after 
the other, would often go through the chute of a dam 
standing upright on single logs ; of O'Donnell, who 

95 



THE FOREST 

could turn a somersault on a floating pine log; of 
the birling matches, wherein two men on a single log 
try to throw each other into the river by treading, 
squirrel fashion, in faster and faster rotation; of 
how a riverman and spiked boots and a saw-log can 
do more work than an ordinary man with a rowboat. 

I do not suppose Dick believed all this — although 
it was strictly and literally true — but his imagination 
was impressed. He gazed with respect on the group 
at the far end of the street, where fifteen or twenty 
lumber-jacks were interested in some amusement con- 
cealed from us. 

" What do you suppose they are doing *? " mur- 
mured Dick, awestricken. 

" Wrestling, or boxing, or gambling, or jumping," 
said I. 

We approached. Gravely, silently, intensely in- 
terested, the cock-hatted, spike-shod, dangerous men 
were playing — croquet ! 

The sight was too much for our nerves. We went 
away. 

The permanent inhabitants of the place we dis- 
covered to be friendly to a degree. The Indian strain 
was evident in various dilution through all. Dick's 
enthusiasm grew steadily until his artistic instincts 
became aggressive, and he flatly announced his in- 
tention of staying at least four days for the purpose 
of making sketches. We talked the matter over. 
Finally it was agreed. Deuce and I were to make a 

96 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

wide circle to the north and west as far as the Hud- 
son's Bay post of Cloche, while Dick filled his note- 
book. That night we slept in beds for the first time. 

That is to say, we slept until about three o'clock. 
Then we became vaguely conscious, through a haze 
of drowse — as one becomes conscious in the pause 
of a sleeping-car — of voices outside our doors. Some 
one said something about its being hardly much use 
to go to bed. Another hoped the sheets were not 
damp. A succession of lights twinkled across the 
walls of our room and were vaguely explained by 
the coughing of a steamboat. We sank into oblivion 
until the calling-bell brought us to our feet. 

I happened to finish my toilet a little before Dick, 
and so descended to the sunlight until he might be 
ready. Roosting on a gray old boulder ten feet out- 
side the door were two figures that made me want to 
rub my eyes. 

The older was a square, ruddy-faced man of sixty, 
with neatly trimmed, snow-white whiskers. He had 
on a soft Alpine hat of pearl gray, a modishly cut 
gray homespun suit, a tie in which glimmered an 
opal pin, wore tan gloves, and had slung over one 
shoulder by a narrow black strap a pair of field- 
glasses. 

The younger was a tall and angular young fellow, 
of an eager and sophomoric youth. His hair was very 
light and very smoothly brushed, his eyes blue and 
rather near-sighted, his complexion pink, with an 

97 



THE FOREST 

obviously recent and superficial sunburn, and his 
clothes, from the white Panama to the broad-soled 
low shoes, of the latest cut and material. Instinct- 
ively I sought his fraternity pin. He looked as 
though he might say " Rah ! Rah ! " something or 
other. A camera completed his outfit. 

Tourists ! How in the world did they get here ? 
And then I remembered the twinkle of the lights and 
the coughing of the steamboat. But what in time 
could they be doing here *? Picturesque as the place 
was, it held nothing to appeal to the Baedeker spirit. 
I surveyed the pair with some interest. 

" I suppose there is pretty good fishing around 
here," ventured the elder. 

He evidently took me for an inhabitant. Remem- 
bering my faded blue shirt and my floppy old hat 
and the red handkerchief about my neck and the 
moccasins on my feet, I did not blame him. 

" I suppose there are bass among the islands," I 
replied. 

We fell into conversation. I learned that he and 
his son were from New York. He learned, by a 
final direct question which was most significant of his 
not belonging to the country, who I was. By chance 
he knew my name. He opened his heart. 

" We came down on the City of Flint," said he. 
" My son and I are on a vacation. We have been 
as far as the Yellowstone, and thought we would 
like to see some of this country. I was assured that 

98 




" You are a judge of fiction ; take thfs 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

on this date I could make connection with the North 
Star for the south. I told the purser of the Flint not 
to wake us up unless the North Star was here at the 
docks. He bundled us off here at three in the morn- 
ing. The North Star was not here ; it is an out- 
rage ! " 

He uttered various threats. 

" I thought the North Star was running away south 
around the Perry Sound region," I suggested. 

"Yes, but she was to begin to-day, June 16, to 
make this connection." He produced a railroad 
folder. " It 's in this," he continued. 

"Did you go by that thing? " I marveled. 

" Why, of course," said he. 

" I forgot you were an American," said I. " You 're 
in Canada now." 

He looked his bewilderment, so I hunted up Dick. 
I detailed the situation. " He does n't know the 
race," I concluded. " Soon he will be trying to get 
information out of the agent. Let 's be on hand." 

We were on hand. The tourist, his face very red, 
his whiskers very white and bristly, marched impor- 
tantly to the agent's office. The latter comprised also 
the post-office, the fish depot, and a general store. 
The agent was for the moment dickering in re two 
pounds of sugar. This transaction took five minutes 
to the pound. Mr. Tourist waited. Then he opened 
up. The agent heard him placidly, as one who listens 
to a curious tale. 

99 

L.ofC. 



THE FOREST 

" What I want to know is, where 's that boat ? " 
ended the tourist. 

" Could n't say," replied the agent. 

" Are n't you the agent of this company *? " 

" Sure," replied the agent. 

" Then why don't you know something about its 
business and plans and intentions ? " 

" Could n't say," replied the agent. 

" Do you think it would do any good to wait for 
the North Star ? Do you suppose they can be com- 
ing'? Do you suppose they've altered the sched- 
ule?" 

" Could n't say," replied the agent. 

" When is the next boat through here ? " 

I listened for the answer in trepidation, for I saw 
that another " Could n't say " would cause the red- 
faced tourist to blow up. To my relief, the agent 
merely inquired, — 

" North or south ? " 

" South, of course. I just came from the north. 
What in the name of everlasting blazes should I 
want to go north again for *? " 

" Could n't say," replied the agent. " The next 
boat south gets in next week, Tuesday or Wednes- 
day." 

" Next week ! " shrieked the tourist. 

" When 's the next boat north ? " interposed the 
son. 

" To-morrow morning." 

IOO 



THE STRANDED STRANGERS 

" What time % " 

" Could n't say ; you 'd have to watch for her." 

" That 's our boat, dad," said the young man. 

" But we 've just come from there ! " snorted his 
father ; " it 's three hundred miles back. It '11 put us 
behind two days. I 've got to be in New York Fri- 
day. I 've got an engagement." He turned suddenly 
to the agent. " Here, I 've got to send a telegram." 

The agent blinked placidly. " You '11 not send it 
from here. This ain't a telegraph station." 

" Where 's the nearest station ? " 

" Fifteen mile." 

Without further parley the old man turned and 
walked, stiff and military, from the place. Near the 
end of the board walk he met the usual doddering 
but amiable oldest inhabitant. 

" Fine day," chirped the patriarch in well-meant 
friendliness. " They jest brought in a bear cub over 
to Antoine's. If you 'd like to take a look at him, 
I '11 show you where it is." 

The tourist stopped short and glared fiercely. 

" Sir," said he, "damn your bear ! " Then he strode 
on, leaving grandpa staring after him. 

In the course of the morning we became quite 
well acquainted, and he resigned. The son appeared 
to take somewhat the humorous view all through 
the affair, which must have irritated the old gentle- 
man. They discussed it rather thoroughly, and finally 
decided to retrace their steps for a fresh start over a 



THE FOREST 

better-known route. This settled, the senior seemed 
to feel relieved of a weight. He even saw and rel- 
ished certain funny phases of the incident, though he 
never ceased to foretell different kinds of trouble for 
the company, varying in range from mere complaints 
to the most tremendous of damage suits. 

He was much interested, finally, in our methods 
of travel, and then, in logical sequence, with what he 
could see about him. He watched curiously my load- 
ing of the canoe, for I had a three-mile stretch of open 
water, and the wind was abroad. Deuce's empirical 
boat wisdom aroused his admiration. He and his son 
were both at the shore to see me off. 

Deuce settled himself in the bottom. I lifted the 
stern from the shore and gently set it afloat. In a 
moment I was ready to start. 

" Wait a minute ! Wait a minute ! " suddenly cried 
the father. 

I swirled my paddle back. The old gentleman was 
hastily fumbling in his pockets. After an instant he 
descended to the water's edge. 

"Here," said he, "you are a judge of fiction; take 
this." 

It was his steamboat and railway folder. 



102 



ON FLIES 




IX 
ON FLIES 

ALL the rest of the day I paddled under the 
frowning cliffs of the hill ranges. Bold, bare, 
scarred, seamed with fissures, their precipice rocks 
gave the impression of ten thousand feet rather than 
only so many hundreds. Late in the afternoon we 
landed against a formation of basaltic blocks cut as 
squarely up and down as a dock, and dropping off 
into as deep water. The waves chug-chug-chugged 
sullenly against them, and the fringe of a dark pine 
forest, drawn back from a breadth of natural grass, 
lowered across the horizon like a thunder-cloud. 

Deuce and I made camp with the uneasy feeling 
of being under inimical inspection. A cold wind 
ruffled lead-like waters. No comfort was in the pros- 
pect, so we retired early. Then it appeared that the 
coarse grass of the park had bred innumerable black 
flies, and that we had our work cut out for us. 

The question of flies — using that, to a woodsman, 
eminently connotive word in its wide embracement 
of mosquitoes, sand-flies, deer-flies, black flies, and 
midges — is one much mooted in the craft. On no 

105 



THE FOREST 

subject are more widely divergent ideas expressed. 
One writer claims that black flies' bites are but the 
temporary inconvenience of a pin-prick ; another tells 
of boils lasting a week as the invariable result of their 
attentions ; a third sweeps aside the whole question 
as unimportant to concentrate his anathemas on the 
musical mosquito ; still a fourth descants on the mad- 
dening midge, and is prepared to defend his claims 
against the world. A like dogmatic partisanship ob- 
tains in the question of defenses. Each and every 
man possessed of a tongue wherewith to speak or a 
pen wherewith to write, heralds the particular merits 
of his own fly-dope, head-net, or mosquito-proof tent- 
lining. Eager advocates of the advantages of pork 
fat, kerosene, pine tar, pennyroyal, oil of cloves, castor 
oil, lollacapop, or a half hundred other concoctions 
will assure you, tears in eyes, that his is the only 
true faith. So many men, so many minds, until the 
theorist is confused into doing the most uncomfort- 
able thing possible — that is, to learn by experience. 
As for the truth, it is at once in all of them and in 
none of them. The annoyance of after-effects from a 
sting depends entirely on the individual's physical 
make-up. Some people are so poisoned by mosquito 
bites that three or four on the forehead suffice to close 
entirely the victim's eyes. On others they leave but 
a small red mark without swelling. Black flies caused 
festering sores on one man I accompanied to the 
woods. In my own case they leave only a tiny 

1 06 



ON FLIES 

blood-spot the size of a pin-head, which bothers me 
not a bit. Midges nearly drove crazy the same com- 
panion of mine, so that finally he jumped into the 
river, clothes and all, to get rid of them. Again, 
merely my own experience would lead me to regard 
them as a tremendous nuisance, but one quite bear- 
able. Indians are less susceptible than whites ; never- 
theless I have seen them badly swelled behind the 
ears from the bites of the big hardwood mosquito. 

You can make up your mind to one thing — from 
the first warm weather until August you must expect 
to cope with insect pests. The black fly will keep you 
busy until late afternoon; the midges will swarm 
you about sunset; and the mosquito will preserve 
the tradition after you have turned in. As for the 
deer-fly, and others of his piratical breed, he will bite 
like a dog at any time. 

To me the most annoying species is the mosquito. 
The black fly is sometimes most industrious — I have 
seen trout fishermen come into camp with the blood 
literally streaming from their faces — but his great 
recommendation is that he holds still to be killed. 
No frantic slaps, no waving of arms, no muffled 
curses. You just place your finger calmly and 
firmly on the spot. You get him every time. In 
this is great, heart-lifting joy. It may be unholy joy, 
perhaps even vengeful, but it leaves the spirit ecstatic. 
The satisfaction of murdering the beast that has had 
the nerve to light on you just as you are reeling in 

107 



THE FOREST 

almost counterbalances the pain of a sting. The 
midge, again — or punkie, or " no-see-'um," just as 
you please — swarms down upon you suddenly and 
with commendable vigor, so that you feel as though 
redhot pepper were being sprinkled on your bare skin; 
and his invisibility and intangibility are such that you 
can never tell whether you have killed him or not; 
but he does n't last long, and dope routs him to- 
tally. Your mosquito, however, is such a deliberate 
brute. He has in him some of that divine fire which 
causes a dog to turn around nine times before lying 
down. 

Whether he is selecting or gloating I do not know, 
but I do maintain that the price of your life's blood 
is often not too great to pay for the cessation of that 
hum. 

" Eet is not hees bite," said Billy, the half-breed, to 
me once, " eet is hees sing." 

I agree with Billy. One mosquito in a tent can 
keep you awake for hours. 

As to protection, it is varied enough in all con- 
science, and always theoretically perfect. A head-net 
falling well down over your chest, or even tied under 
your arm-pits, is at once the simplest and most 
fallacious of these theories. It will keep vast numbers 
of flies out, to be sure. It will also keep the few ad- 
venturous discoverers in, where you can neither kill 
nor eject. Likewise you are deprived of your pipe ; 
and the common homely comfort of spitting on your 

108 



ON FLIES 

bait is totally denied you. The landscape takes on 
the prismatic colors of refraction, so that, while you 
can easily make out red, white, and blue Chinese 
dragons and mythological monsters, you are unable 
to discover the more welcome succulence, say, of a 
partridge on a limb. And the end of that head-net is 
to be picked to holes by the brush, and finally to be 
snatched from you to sapling height, whence your 
pains will rescue it only in a useless condition. Prob- 
ably then you will dance the war-dance of exasper- 
ation on its dismembered remains. Still, there are 
times — in case of straight-away river paddling, or 
open walking, or lengthened waiting — when the net 
is a great comfort. And it is easily included in the 
pack. 

Next in order come the various " dopes." And they 
are various. From the stickiest, blackest pastes to 
the silkiest, suavest oils they range, through the 
grades of essence, salve, and cream. Every man has 
his own recipe — the infallible. As a general rule, it 
may be stated that the thicker kinds last longer and 
are generally more thoroughly effective, but the 
lighter are pleasanter to wear, though requiring more 
frequent application. At a pinch, ordinary pork fat 
is good. The Indians often make temporary use of 
the broad caribou leaf, crushing it between their 
palms and rubbing the juices on the skin. I know by 
experience that this is effective, but very transitory. 
It is, however, a good thing to use when resting on 

109 



THE FOREST 

the trail, for, by the grace of Providence, flies are 
rarely bothersome as long as you are moving at a fair 
gait. _ 

This does not always hold good, however, any 
more than the best fly-dope is always effective. I re- 
member most vividly the first day of a return journey 
from the shores of the Hudson Bay. The weather 
was rather oppressively close and overcast. We had 
paddled a few miles up river from the fur trading- 
post, and then had landed in order to lighten the 
canoe for the ascent against the current. At that 
point the forest has already begun to dwindle toward 
the Land of Little Sticks, so that often miles and 
miles of open muskegs will intervene between groups 
of the stunted trees. Jim and I found ourselves a 
little over waist deep in luxuriant and tangled grasses 
that impeded and clogged our every footstep. Never 
shall I forget that country — its sad and lonely iso- 
lation, its dull lead sky, its silence, and the closeness 
of its stifling atmosphere — and never shall I see it 
otherwise than as in a dense brown haze, a haze com- 
posed of swarming millions of mosquitoes. There 
is not the slightest exaggeration in the statement. 
At every step new multitudes rushed into our faces 
to join the old. At times Jim's back was so cov- 
ered with them that they almost overlaid the color 
of the cloth. And as near as we could see, every 
square foot of the thousands of acres quartered its 
hordes. 



ON FLIES 

We doped liberally, but without the slightest 
apparent effect. Probably two million squeamish 
mosquitoes were driven away by the disgust of our 
medicaments, but what good did that do us when 
eight million others were not so particular ? At the 
last we hung bandanas under our hats, cut fans of 
leaves, and stumbled on through a most miserable 
day until we could build a smudge at evening. 

For smoke is usually a specific. Not always, how- 
ever — some midges seem to delight in it. The In- 
dians make a tiny blaze of birch bark and pine twigs 
deep in a nest of grass and caribou leaves. When 
the flame is well started, they twist the growing vege- 
tation canopy-wise above it. In that manner they 
gain a few minutes of dense, acrid smoke, which is 
enough for an Indian. A. white man, however, needs 
something more elaborate. 

The chief reason for your initial failure in making 
an effective smudge will be that you will not get 
your fire well started before piling on the damp 
smoke-material. It need not be a conflagration, but it 
should be bright and glowing, so that the punk birch 
or maple wood you add will not smother it entirely. 
After it is completed, you will not have to sit 
coughing in the thick of fumigation, as do many, 
but only to leeward and underneath. Your hat used 
as a fan will eddy the smoke temporarily into de- 
sirable nooks and crevices. I have slept without an- 
noyance on the Great Plains, where the mosquitoes 

in 



THE FOREST 

seem to go in organized and predatory bands, merely 
by lying beneath a smudge that passed at least five 
feet above me. You will find the frying-pan a handy 
brazier for the accommodation of a movable smoke 
to be transported to the interior of the tent. And it 
does not in the least hurt the frying-pan. These be 
hints, briefly spoken, out of which at times you may 
have to construct elaborate campaigns. 

But you come to grapples in the defense of com- 
fort when night approaches. If you can eat and sleep 
well, you can stand almost any hardship. The night's 
rest is as carefully to be fore-assured as the food that 
sustains you. No precaution is too elaborate to cer- 
tify unbroken repose. 

By dark you will discover the peak of your tent 
to be liberally speckled with insects of all sorts. Es- 
pecially is this true of an evening that threatens rain. 
Your smudge-pan may drive away the mosquitoes, 
but merely stupefies the other varieties. You are 
forced to the manipulation of a balsam fan. 

In your use of this simple implement you will be- 
tray the extent of your experience. Dick used at 
first to begin at the rear peak and brush as rapidly as 
possible toward the opening. The flies, thoroughly 
aroused, eddied about a few frantic moments, like 
leaves in an autumn wind, finally to settle close to 
the sod in the crannies between the tent-wall and the 
ground. Then Dick would lie flat on his belly in 
order to brush with equal vigor at these new lurking- 

112 






" You are forced to the manipulation of a balsam fan 



ON FLIES 

places. The flies repeated the autumn-leaf effect, and 
returned to the rear peak. This was amusing to me 
and furnished the flies with healthful, appetizing 
exercise, but was bad for Dick's soul. After a time 
he discovered the only successful method is the gentle 
one. Then he began at the peak and brushed for- 
ward slowly, very, very slowly, so that the limited 
intellect of his visitors did not become confused. 
Thus when they arrived at the opening they saw it 
and used it, instead of searching frantically for corners 
in which to hide from apparently vengeful destruc- 
tion. Then he would close his tent-flap securely, and 
turn in at once. So he was able to sleep until earliest 
daylight. At that time the mosquitoes again found 
him out. 

Nine out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine out of a hun- 
dred, sleep in open tents. For absolute and perfect 
comfort proceed as follows : Have your tent-maker 
sew you a tent of cheese-cloth I with the same dimen- 
sions as your shelter, except that the walls should be 
loose and voluminous at the bottom. It should have 
no openings. Suspend this affair inside your tent by 
means of cords or tapes. Drop it about you. Spread 
it out. Lay rod-cases, duffel-bags, or rocks along its 
lower edges to keep it spread. You will sleep be- 
neath it like a child in winter. No driving out of 

1 Do not allow yourself to be talked into substituting mosquito-bar 
or bobinet. Any mesh coarser than cheese-cloth will prove pregnable 
to the most enterprising of the smaller species. 

IJ 3 



THE FOREST 

reluctant flies ; no enforced early rising ; no danger 
of a single overlooked insect to make the midnight 
miserable. The cheese-cloth weighs almost nothing, 
can be looped up out of the way in the daytime, ad- 
mits the air readily. Nothing could fill the soul with 
more ecstatic satisfaction than to lie for a moment 
before going to sleep listening to a noise outside like 
an able-bodied sawmill that indicates the ping-gosh 
are abroad. 

It would be unfair to leave the subject without a 
passing reference to its effect on the imagination. 
We are all familiar with comic paper mosquito sto- 
ries, and some of them are very good. But until 
actual experience takes you by the hand and leads you 
into the realm of pure fancy, you will never know of 
what improvisation the human mind is capable. 

The picture rises before my mind of the cabin of 
a twenty-eight-foot cutter-sloop just before the dawn 
of a midsummer day. The sloop was made for busi- 
ness, and the cabin harmonized exactly with the 
sloop — painted pine, wooden bunks without mat- 
tresses, camp-blankets, duffel-bags slung up because 
all the floor place had been requisitioned for sleeping 
purposes. We were anchored a hundred feet off land 
from Pilot Cove, on the uninhabited north shore. 
The mosquitoes had adventured on the deep. We 
lay half asleep. 

" On the middle rafter," murmured the Football 
Man, " is one old fellow giving signals." 

114 



ON FLIES 

"A quartette is singing drinking-songs on my 
nose," muttered the Glee Club Man. 

"We won't need to cook," I suggested somno- 
lently. "We can run up and down on deck with 
our mouths open and get enough for breakfast." 

The fourth member opened one eye. " Boys," he 
breathed, " we won't be able to go on to-morrow un- 
less we give up having any more biscuits." 

After a time some one murmured, " Why? " 

" We '11 have to use all the lard on the mast. 
They 're so mad because they can't get at us that 
they 're biting the mast. It 's already swelled up as 
big as a barrel. We '11 never be able to get the main- 
sail up. Any of you boys got any vaseline ? Per- 
haps a little fly-dope " — 

But we snored vigorously in unison. 

The Indians say that when Kitch' Manitou had 
created men he was dissatisfied, and so brought 
women into being. At once love-making began, 
and then, as now, the couples sought solitude for 
their exchanges of vows, their sighings to the moon, 
their claspings of hands. Marriages ensued. The 
situation remained unchanged. Life was one per- 
petual honeymoon. I suppose the novelty was fresh 
and the sexes had not yet realized they would not 
part as abruptly as they had been brought together. 
The villages were deserted, while the woods and 
bushes were populous with wedded and unwedded 
lovers. Kitch' Manitou looked on the proceedings 

Ir 5 



THE FOREST 

with disapproval. All this was most romantic and 
beautiful, no doubt, but in the mean time mi-daw- 
min, the corn, mi-no-men, the rice, grew rank and 
uncultivated; while bis-iw, the lynx, and swingwaage, 
the wolverine, and me-en-gan, the wolf, committed 
unchecked depredations among the weaker forest 
creatures. The business of life was being sadly neg- 
lected. So Kitch' Manitou took counsel with him- 
self, and created saw-gi-may, the mosquito, to whom 
he gave as dwelling the woods and bushes. That 
took the romance out of the situation. As my nar- 
rator grimly expressed it, " Him come back, go to 
work." 

Certainly it should be most effective. Even the 
thick-skinned moose is not exempt from discomfort. 
At certain seasons the canoe voyager in the Far North 
will run up on a dozen in the course of a day's travel, 
standing nose-deep in the river merely to escape the 
insect pests. 

However, this is to be remembered : after the first 
of August they bother very little ; before that time 
the campaign I have outlined is effective ; even in 
fly season the worst days are infrequent; in the 
woods you must expect to pay a certain price in 
discomfort for a very real and very deep pleasure. 
Wet, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, difficult travel, insects, 
hard beds, aching muscles — all these at one time 
or another will be your portion. If you are of the 
class that cannot have a good time unless everything 

116 



ON FLIES 

is right with it, stay out of the woods. One thing at 
least will always be wrong. When you have gained 
the faculty of ignoring the one disagreeable thing 
and concentrating your powers on the compensations, 
then you will have become a true woodsman, and to 
your desires the forest will always be calling. 



117 



CLOCHE 




X 
CLOCHE 

IMAGINE a many-armed lake, like a starfish, 
nested among rugged Laurentian hills, whose 
brows are bare and forbidding, but whose concealed 
ravines harbor each its cool screen of forest growth. 
Imagine a brawling stream escaping at one of the 
arms, to tumble, intermittently visible among the trees, 
down a series of cascades and rapids, to the broad, 
island-dotted calm of the big lake. Imagine a meadow 
at the mouth of this stream, and on the meadow a 
single white dot. Thus you will see Cloche, a trading- 
post of the Honorable the Hudson's Bay Company, 
as Deuce and I saw it from the summit of the hills. 
We had accomplished a very hard scramble, which 
started well enough in a ravine so leafy and green 
and impenetrable that we might well have imagined 
ourselves in a boundless forest. Deuce had scented 
sundry partridges, which he had pointed with entire 
deference to the good form of a sporting dog's con- 
ventions. As usual, to Deuce's never-failing surprise 
and disgust, the birds had proved themselves most 
uncultivated and rude persons by hopping promptly 



THE FOREST 

into trees instead of lying to point and then flush- 
ing as a well-taught partridge should. I had refused 
to pull pistol on them. Deuce's heart was broken. 
Then, finally, we came to cliffs up which we had to 
scale, and boulders which we had to climb, and fissures 
which we had to jump or cross on fallen trees, and 
wide, bare sweeps of rock and blueberry-bushes which 
we had to cover, until at last we stood where we 
could look all ways at once. 

The starfish thrust his insinuating arms in among 
the distant hills to the north. League after league, 
rising and falling and rising again into ever bluer 
distance, forest-covered, mysterious, other ranges and 
systems lifted, until at last, far out, nearly at the 
horizon-height of my eye, flashed again the gleam of 
water. And so the starfish arms of the little lake at 
my feet seemed to have plunged into this wilderness 
tangle only to reappear at greater distance. Like 
swamp-fire, it lured the imagination always on and on 
and on through the secret waterways of the uninhab- 
ited North. It was as though I stood on the divid- 
ing ridge between the old and the new. Through 
the southern haze, hull down, I thought to make out 
the smoke of a Great Lake freighter ; from the shelter 
of a distant cove I was not surprised a moment later 
to see emerge a tiny speck whose movements betrayed 
it as a birch canoe. The great North was at this, 
the most southern of the Hudson's Bay posts, striking 
a pin-point of contact with the world of men. 

122 



CLOCHE 

Deuce and I angled down the mountain toward 
the stream. Our arrival coincided with that of the 
canoe. It was of the Ojibway three-fathom pattern, 
and contained a half-dozen packs, a sledge-dog, with 
whom Deuce at once opened guarded negotiations, 
an old Indian, a squaw, and a child of six or eight. 
We exchanged brief greetings. Then I sat on a 
stump and, watched the portage. 

These were evidently "Woods Indians," an entirely 
different article from the " Post Indians." They wore 
their hair long, and bound by a narrow strip or fillet ; 
their faces were hard and deeply lined, with a fine, 
bold, far-seeing look to the eyes which comes only 
from long woods dwelling. They walked, even under 
heavy loads, with a sagging, springy gait, at once 
sure-footed and swift. Instead of tump-lines the man 
used his sash, and the woman a blanket knotted 
loosely together at the ends. The details of their 
costumes were interesting in combination of jeans 
and buckskin, broadcloth and blanket, stroud and a 
material evidently made from the strong white sack- 
ing in which flour intended for frontier consumption 
is always packed. After the first double-barreled 
" bo' jou', bo' jou'," they paid no further attention to 
me. In a few moments the portage was completed. 
The woman thrust her paddle against the stream's 
bottom and the canoe, and so embarked. The man 
stepped smoothly to his place like a cat leaping from 
a chair. They shot away with the current, leaving 

123 



THE FOREST 

behind them a strange and mysterious impression of 
silence. 

I followed down a narrow but well-beaten trail, 
and so at the end of a half-mile came to the meadow 
and the post of Cloche. 

The building itself was accurately of the Hudson 
Bay type — a steep, sloping roof greater in front 
than behind, a deep recessed veranda, squared logs 
sheathed with whitewashed boards. About it was a 
little garden, which, besides the usual flowers and 
vegetables, contained such exotics as a deer confined 
to a pen and a bear chained to a stake. As I ap- 
proached, the door opened and the Trader came out. 

Now, often along the southern fringe your Hud- 
son's Bay Trader will prove to be a distinct dis- 
appointment. In fact, one of the historic old posts 
is now kept by a pert little cockney Englishman, 
cringing or impudent as the main chance seems to 
advise. When you have penetrated farther into the 
wilderness, however, where the hardships of winter 
and summer travel, the loneliness of winter posts, 
the necessity of dealing directly with savage men 
and savage nature, develops the quality of a man or 
wrecks him early in the game, you will be certain 
of meeting your type. But here, within fifty miles 
of the railroad ! 

The man who now stepped into view, however, 
preserved in his appearance all the old traditions. 
He was, briefly, a short black-and-white man built 

124 



CLOCHE 

very square. Immense power lurked in the broad, 
heavy shoulders, the massive chest, the thick arms, 
the sturdy, column-like legs. As for his face, it was 
almost entirely concealed behind a curly square 
black beard that grew above his cheek-bones nearly 
to his eyes. Only a thick hawk nose, an inscrutable 
pair of black eyes under phenomenally hairy eye- 
brows, and a short black pipe showed plainly from 
the hirsute tangle. He was lock, stock, and barrel of 
the Far North, one of the old regime. I was rejoiced 
to see him there, but did not betray a glimmer of 
interest. I knew my type too well for that. 

" How are you," he said, grudgingly. 

" Good-day," said I. 

We leaned against the fence and smoked, each 
contemplating carefully the end of his pipe. I knew 
better than to say anything. The Trader was looking 
me over, making up his mind about me. Speech on 
my part would argue lightness of disposition, for it 
would seem to indicate that I was not also making 
up my mind about him. In this pause there was not 
the least unfriendliness. Only, in the woods you pre- 
fer to know first the business and character of a chance 
acquaintance. Afterwards you may ingratiate to his 
good will. All of which possesses a beautiful sim- 
plicity, for it proves that good or bad opinion need 
not depend on how gracefully you can chatter assur- 
ances. At the end of a long period the Trader in- 
quired, " Which way you headed *? " 

125 



THE FOREST 

" Out in a canoe for pleasure. Headed almost any- 
where." 

Again we smoked. 

" Dog any good ? " asked the Trader, removing 
his pipe and pointing to the observant Deuce. 

" He '11 hunt shade on a hot day," said I, tenta- 
tively. " How 's the fur in this district ? " 

We were off. He invited me in and showed me 
his bear. In ten minutes we were seated chair-tilted 
on the veranda, and slowly, very cautiously, in ab- 
breviated syncopation, were feeling our way toward 
an intimacy. 

Now came the Indians I had seen at the lake to 
barter for some flour and pork. I was glad of the 
chance to follow them all into the trading-room. A 
low wooden counter backed by a grill divided the 
main body of the room from the entrance. It was 
deliciously dim. All the charm of the Aromatic Shop 
was in the place, and an additional flavor of the wilds. 
Everything here was meant for the Indian trade. 
Bolts of bright-patterned ginghams, blankets of red 
or blue, articles of clothing, boxes of beads for deco- 
ration, skeins of brilliant silk, lead bars for bullet- 
making, stacks of long brass-bound " trade guns " in 
the corner, small mirrors, red and parti-colored worsted 
sashes with tassels on the ends, steel traps of various 
sizes, and a dozen other articles to be desired by the 
forest people. And here, unlike the Aromatic Shop, 
were none of the products of the Far North. All 

126 



CLOCHE 

that, I knew, was to be found elsewhere, in another 
apartment, equally dim, but delightful in the orderly- 
disorder of a storeroom. 

Afterwards I made the excuse of a pair of mocca- 
sins to see this other room. We climbed a steep, 
rough flight of stairs to emerge through a sort of 
trap-door into a space directly under the roof. It was 
lit only by a single little square at one end. Deep 
under the eaves I could make out row after row of 
boxes and chests. From the rafters hung a dozen 
pair of snow-shoes. In the center of the floor, half 
overturned, lay an open box from which tumbled 
dozens of pairs of moose-hide snow-shoe mocca- 
sins. 

Shades of childhood, what a place ! No one of us 
can fail to recall with a thrill the delights of a rum- 
mage in the attic ; the joy of pulling from some half- 
forgotten trunk a wholly forgotten shabby garment 
which nevertheless has taken to itself from the still- 
ness of undisturbed years the faint aroma of romance ; 
the rapture of discovering in the dusk of a concealed 
nook some old spur or broken knife or rusty pistol 
redolent of the open road. Such essentially common- 
place affairs they are, after all, in the light of our 
mature common sense, but such unspeakable ecsta- 
sies to the romance-breathing years of fancy. Here 
would no fancy be required. To rummage in these 
silent chests and boxes would be to rummage, not 
in the fictions of imagination, but the facts of the 

127 



THE FOREST 

most real picturesque. In yonder square box are the 
smoke-tanned shoes of silence ; that velvet dimness 
would prove to be the fur of a bear ; this birch-bark 
package contains maple sugar savored of the wilds. 
Buckskin, both white and buff, bears' claws in strings, 
bundles of medicinal herbs, sweet-grass baskets fra- 
grant as an Eastern tale, birch-bark boxes embroidered 
with stained quills of the porcupines, bows of hickory 
and arrows of maple, queer half-boots of stiff sealskin 
from the very shores of the Hudson Bay, belts of 
beadwork, yellow and green, for the Corn Dance, 
even a costume or so of buckskin complete for cere- 
monial — all these the fortunate child would find 
were he to take the rainy-day privilege in this, the 
most wonderful attic in all the world. And then, 
after he had stroked the soft fur, and smelled the 
buckskin and sweet-grasses, and tasted the crumbling 
maple sugar, and dressed himself in the barbaric 
splendors of the North, he could flatten his little 
nose against the dim square of light and look out 
over the glistening yellow backs of a dozen birch- 
bark canoes to the distant, rain-blurred hills, beyond 
which lay the country whence all these things had 
come. Do you wonder that in after years that child 
hits the Long Trail *? Do you still wonder at finding 
these strange, taciturn, formidable, tender-hearted 
men dwelling lonely in the Silent Places % 

The Trader yanked several of the boxes to the 
center and prosaically tumbled about their contents. 

128 



CLOCHE 

He brought to light heavy moose-hide moccasins with 
high linen tops for the snow ; lighter buckskin moc- 
casins, again with the high tops, but this time of 
white tanned doeskin ; slipper-like deerskin mocca- 
sins with rolled edges for the summer; oil-tanned 
shoepacs, with and without the flexible leather sole; 
" cruisers " of varying degree of height — each and 
every sort of foot-gear in use in the Far North, ex- 
cepting and saving always the beautiful soft doeskin 
slippers finished with white fawnskin and ornamented 
with the Ojibway flower pattern for which I sought. 
Finally he gave it up. 

" I had a few pair. They must have been sent 
out," said he. 

We rummaged a little further for luck's sake, 
then descended to the outer air. I left him to fetch 
my canoe, but returned in the afternoon. We be- 
came friends. That evening we sat in the little sit- 
ting-room and talked far into the night. 

He was a true Hudson's Bay man, steadfastly 
loyal to the Company. I mentioned the legend of la 
Longue 'Traverse ; he stoutly asserted he had never 
heard of it. I tried to buy a minkskin or so to hang 
on the wall as souvenir of my visit; he was genu- 
inely distressed, but had to refuse because the Com- 
pany had not authorized him to sell, and he had 
nothing of his own to give. I mentioned the River 
of the Moose, the Land of Little Sticks; his deep 
eyes sparkled with excitement, and he asked eagerly 

129 



THE FOREST 

a multitude of details concerning late news from the 
northern posts. 

And as the evening dwindled, after the manner of 
Traders everywhere he began to tell me the "ghost 
stories " of this station of Cloche. Every post has 
gathered a mass of legendary lore in the slow years, 
but this had been on the route of the voyageurs from 
Montreal and Quebec at the time when the lords of 
the North journeyed to the scenes of their annual 
revels at Fort Williams. The Trader had much to 
say of the magnificence and luxury of these men — 
their cooks, their silken tents, their strange and costly 
foods, their rare wines, their hordes of French and 
Indian canoemen and packers. Then Cloche was a 
halting-place for the night. Its meadows had blos- 
somed many times with the gay tents arid banners of a 
great company. He told me, as vividly as though 
he had been an eye-witness, of how the canoes must 
have loomed up suddenly from between the islands. 
By and by he seized the lamp and conducted me 
outside, where hung ponderous ornamental steel- 
yards, on which in the old days the peltries were 
weighed. 

" It is not so now," said he ; " we buy by count, 
and modern scales weigh the provisions. And the 
beaver are all gone." 

We re-entered the house in silence. After a while 
he began briefly to sketch his own career. Then, 
indeed, the flavor of the Far North breathed its crisp 

130 




" A la Claire Fontaine crooned . . . by a man of impassive bulk and 
countenance, but with glowing eyes" 



CLOCHE 

bracing ozone through the atmosphere of the room. 
He had started life at one of the posts of the Far 
Northwest. At the age of twelve he enlisted in the 
Company. Throughout forty years he had served 
her. He had traveled to all the strange places of the 
North, and claimed to have stood on the shores of 
that half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. 

" It was snowing at the time," he said, prosaically ; 
" and I could n't see anything, except that I 'd have 
to bear to the east to get away from open water. 
Maybe she was n't the lake. The Injins said she was, 
but I was too almighty shy of grub to bother with 
lakes." 

Other names fell from him in the course of talk, 
some of which I had heard and some not, but all of 
which rang sweet and clear with no uncertain note 
of adventure. Especially haunts my memory an 
impression of desolate burned trees standing stick- 
like in death on the shores of Lost River. 

He told me he had been four years at Cloche, but 
expected shortly to be transferred, as the fur was 
getting scarce, and another post one hundred miles 
to the west could care for the dwindling trade. He 
hoped to be sent into the Northwest, but shrugged 
his shoulders as he said so, as though that were in 
the hands of the gods. At the last he fished out a 
concertina and played for me. Have you ever heard, 
after dark, in the North where the hills grow big 
at sunset, a la Claire Fontaine crooned to such an 

131 



THE FOREST 

accompaniment, and by a man of impassive bulk 
and countenance, but with glowing eyes *? 

I said good-night, and stumbled, sight-dazed, 
through the cool dark to my tent near the beach. 
The weird minor strains breathed after me as I went. 

" A la c lair e font aine 
M'en allant promener, 
J'ai trouve I'eau si belle 
Que je m'y suis baigne, 
II y a long temps que je t' ' aime 
Jamais je ne t' oublierai." 

The next day, with the combers of a howling 
northwesterly gale clutching at the stern of the canoe, 
I rode in a glory of spray and copper-tasting excite- 
ment back to Dick and his half-breed settlement. 

But the incident had its sequel. The following 
season, as I was sitting writing at my desk, a strange 
package was brought me. It was wrapped in linen 
sewn strongly with waxed cord. Its contents lie be- 
fore me now — a pair of moccasins fashioned of the 
finest doeskin, tanned so beautifully that the delicious 
smoke fragrance fills the room, and so effectively that 
they could be washed with soap and water without 
destroying their softness. The tongue-shaped piece 
over the instep is of white fawnskin heavily orna- 
mented in five colors of silk. Where it joins the 
foot of the slipper it is worked over and over into a 
narrow cord of red and blue silk. The edge about 
the ankle is turned over, deeply scalloped, and bound 

132 



CLOCHE 

at the top with a broad band of blue silk stitched 
with pink. Two tiny blue bows at either side the 
ankle ornament the front. Altogether a most mag- 
nificent foot-gear. No word accompanied them, ap- 
parently, but after some search I drew a bit of paper 
from the toe of one of them. It was inscribed simply : 
" Fort la Cloche." 



133 



THE HABITANTS 




XI 
THE HABITANTS 

DURING my absence Dick had made many- 
friends. Wherein lies his secret I do not know, 
but he has a peculiar power of ingratiation with 
people whose lives are quite outside his experience or 
sympathies. In the short space of four days he had 
earned joyous greetings from every one in town. The 
children grinned at him cheerfully ; the old women 
cackled good-natured little teasing jests to him as he 
passed; the pretty, dusky half-breed girls dropped 
their eyelashes fascinatingly across their cheeks, tem- 
pering their coyness with a smile ; the men painfully 
demanded information as to artistic achievement 
which was evidently as well meant as it was foreign 
to any real thirst for knowledge they might possess ; 
even the lumber-jacks addressed him as "Bub." And 
withal Dick's methods of approach were radically 
wrong, for he blundered upon new acquaintance with 
a beaming smile, which is ordinarily a sure repellent 
to the cautious, taciturn men of the woods. Perhaps 
their keenness penetrated to the fact that he was ab- 
solutely without guile, and that his kindness was an 

i37 



THE FOREST 

essential part of himself. I should be curious to know 
whether Billy Knapp of the Black Hills would sur- 
render his gun to Dick for inspection. 

" I want you to go out this afternoon to see some 
friends of mine," said Dick. " They 're on a farm 
about two miles back in the brush. They 're ancestors." 

" They 're what % " I inquired. 

" Ancestors. You can go down to Grosse Point 
near Detroit and find people living in beautiful coun- 
try places next the water, and after dinner they '11 
show you an old silhouette or a daguerreotype or 
something like that, and will say to you proudly, 
' This is old Jules, my ancestor, who was a pioneer 
in this country. The Place has been in the family 
ever since his time.' " 

"Well?" 

" Well, this is a French family, and they are pio- 
neers, and the family has a place that slopes down to the 
water through white birch-trees, and it is of the kind 
very tenacious of its own land. In two hundred years 
this will be a great resort ; bound to be — beautiful, 
salubrious, good sport, fine scenery, accessible " — 

" Railroad fifty miles away. Boat every once in a 
while," said I, sarcastically. 

" Accessible in two hundred years, all right," in- 
sisted Dick, serenely. "Even Canada can build a 
quarter of a mile of railway a year. Accessible," he 
went on, "good shipping-point for country now un- 
developed." 

138 



THE HABITANTS 

" You ought to be a real estate agent," I advised. 

" Lived two hundred years too soon," disclaimed 
Dick. " What more obvious ? These are certainly 
ancestors." 

" Family may die out," I suggested. 

" It has a good start," said Dick, sweetly. " There 
are eighty-seven in it now." 

" What ! " I gasped. 

"One great-grandfather, twelve grandparents, 
thirty-seven parents, and thirty-seven children," tabu- 
lated Dick. 

" I should like to see the great-grandfather," said 
I ; "he must be very old and feeble." 

" He is eighty-five years old," said Dick, " and the 
last time I saw him he was engaged with an axe in 
clearing trees off his farm." * 

All of these astonishing statements I found to be 
absolutely true. 

We started out afoot soon after dinner, through a 
scattering growth of popples that alternately drew the 
veil of coyness over the blue hills and caught our 
breath with the delight of a momentary prospect. 
Deuce, remembering autumn days, concluded par- 
tridges, and scurried away on the expert diagonal, his 
hind legs tucked well under his flanks. The road 
itself was a mere cutting through the miniature 
woods, winding to right or left for the purpose of 
avoiding a log-end or a boulder, surmounting little 
knolls with an idle disregard for the straight line, 

i39 



THE FOREST 

knobby with big round stones, and interestingly di- 
versified by circular mud-holes a foot or so in diame- 
ter. After a mile and a half we came to the corner of 
a snake fence. This, Dick informed me, marked the 
limits of the " farm." 

We burst through the screen of popples definitely 
into the clear. A two-storied house of squared logs 
crested a knoll in the middle distance. Ten acres of 
grass marsh, perhaps twenty of plowed land, and then 
the ash-white-green of popples. We dodged the grass 
marsh and gained the house. Dick was at once among 
friends. 

The mother had no English, so smiled expan- 
sively, her bony arms folded across her stomach. 
Her oldest daughter, a frail-looking girl in the twen- 
ties, but with a sad and spiritual beauty of the Ma- 
donna in her big eyes and straight black hair, gave 
us a shy good-day. Three boys, just alike in their 
slender, stolid Indian good looks, except that they 
differed in size, nodded with the awkwardness of the 
male. Two babies stared solemnly. A little girl with 
a beautiful oval face, large mischievous gray eyes 
behind long black lashes, a mischievously quirked 
mouth to match the eyes, and black hair banged 
straight, both front and behind, in almost medieval 
fashion, twirked a pair of brown bare legs all about 
us. Another light-haired, curly little girl, surmounted 
by an old yachting-cap, spread apart sturdy shoes in 
an attitude at once critical and expectant. 

140 



THE HABITANTS 

Dick rose to the occasion by sorting out from some 
concealed recess of his garments a huge paper parcel 
of candy. With infinite tact, he presented this bag to 
Madame, rather than the children. Madame insti- 
tuted judicious distribution and appropriate reserva- 
tion for the future. We entered the cabin. 

Never have I seen a place more exquisitely neat. 
The floor had not only been washed clean, it had 
been scrubbed white. The walls of logs were freshly 
whitewashed. The chairs were polished. The few 
ornaments were new and not at all dusty or dingy or 
tawdry. Several religious pictures, a portrait of roy- 
alty, a lithographed advertisement of some buggy, a 
photograph or so — and then just the fresh, whole- 
some cleanliness of scrubbed pine. Madame made us 
welcome with smiles — a faded, lean woman with a 
remnant of beauty peeping from her soft eyes, but 
worn down to the first principles of pioneer bone and 
gristle by toil, care, and the bearing of children. I 
spoke to her in French, complimenting her on the 
appearance of the place. She was genuinely pleased, 
saying in reply that one did one's possible, but that 
children ! — with an expressive pause. 

Next we called for volunteers to show us to the 
great-grandfather. Our elfish little girls at once of- 
fered, and went dancing off down the trail like 
autumn leaves in a wind. Whether it was the Indian 
in them, or the effects of environment, or merely our 
own imaginations, we both had the same thought 

141 



THE FOREST 

■ — that in these strange, taciturn, friendly, smiling, 
pirouetting little creatures was some eerie wild strain 
akin to the woods and birds and animals. As they 
danced on ahead of us, turning to throw us a deli- 
cious smile or a half-veiled roguish glance of nascent 
coquetry, we seemed to swing into an orbit of expe- 
rience foreign to our own. These bright-eyed woods 
people were in the last analysis as inscrutable to us 
as the squirrels. 

We followed our swirling, airy guides down 
through a trail to another clearing planted with po- 
tatoes. On the further side of this they stopped, hand 
in hand, at the woods' fringe, and awaited us in a 
startlingly sudden repose. 

" Via le gran'pere," said they in unison. 

At the words a huge, gaunt man clad in shirt and 
jeans arose and confronted us. Our first impression 
was of a vast framework stiffened and shrunken into 
the peculiar petrifaction of age ; our second of a Jove- 
like wealth of iron-gray beard and hair ; our third of 
eyes, wide, clear, and tired with looking out on a 
century of the world's time. His movements, as he 
laid one side his axe and passed a great gnarled hand 
across his forehead, were angular and slow. We knew 
instinctively the quality of his work — a deliberate 
pause, a mighty blow, another pause, a painful re- 
covery — labor compounded of infinite slow patience, 
but wonderfully effective in the week's result. It 
would go on without haste, without pause, inevit- 

142 







He was a Patriarch " 



THE HABITANTS 

able as the years slowly closing about the toiler. His 
mental processes would be of the same fiber. The ap- 
parent hesitation might seem to waste the precious 
hours remaining, but in the end, when the engine 
started, it would move surely and unswervingly along 
the appointed grooves. In his wealth of hair; in his 
wide eyes, like the mysterious blanks of a marble 
statue ; in his huge frame, gnarled and wasted to the 
strange, impressive, powerful age-quality of Phidias's 
old men, he seemed to us to deserve a wreath and a 
marble seat with strange inscriptions and the graceful 
half-draperies of another time and a group of old 
Greeks like himself with whom to exchange slow sen- 
tences on the body politic. Indeed, the fact that his 
seat was of fallen pine, and his draperies of butternut 
brown, and his audience two half-breed children, an 
artist, and a writer, and his body politic two hundred 
acres in the wilderness, did not filch from him the im- 
pressiveness of his estate. He was a Patriarch. It did 
not need the park of birch-trees, the grass beneath 
them sloping down to the water, the wooded knoll 
fairly insisting on a spacious mansion, to substantiate 
Dick's fancy that he had discovered an ancestor. 

Neat piles of brush, equally neat piles of cord-wood, 
knee-high stumps as cleanly cut as by a saw, attested 
the old man's efficiency. We conversed. 

Yes, said he, the soil was good. It is laborious to 
clear away the forest. Still, one arrives. M'sieu has 
but to look. In the memory of his oldest grandson, 

i43 



THE FOREST 

even, all this was a forest. Le bon Dieu had blessed 
him. His family was large. Yes, it was as M'sieu 
said, eighty-seven — that is, counting himself. The 
soil was not wonderful. It is indeed a large family, 
and much labor, but somehow there was always food 
for all. For his part he had a great pity for those 
whom God had not blessed. It must be very lone- 
some without children. 

We spared a private thought that this old man was 
certainly in no danger of loneliness. 

Yes, he went on, he was old — eighty-five. He 
was not as quick as he used to be ; he left that for 
the young ones. Still, he could do a day's work. He 
was most proud to have made these gentlemen's ac- 
quaintance. He wished us good-day. 

We left him seated on the pine-log, his axe be- 
tween his knees, his great gnarled brown hands hang- 
ing idly. After a time we heard the whack of his 
implement; then after another long time we heard it 
whack again. We knew that those two blows had 
gone straight and true and forceful to the mark. So 
old a man had no energy to expend in the indirec- 
tions of haste. 

Our elfish guides led us back along the trail to 
the farm-house. A girl of thirteen had just arrived 
from school. In the summer the little ones divided 
the educational advantages among themselves, turn 
and turn about. 

The newcomer had been out into the world and 
144 



THE HABITANTS 

was dressed accordingly. A neat dark-blue cloth 
dress, plainly made, a dull red and blue checked 
apron ; a broad round hat, shoes and stockings, all in 
the best and quietest taste — marked contrast to the 
usual garish Sunday-best of the Anglo-Saxon. She 
herself exemplified the most striking type of beauty 
to be found in the mixed bloods. Her hair was thick 
and glossy and black in the mode that throws deep 
purple shadows under the rolls and coils. Her face 
was a regular oval, like the opening in a wishbone. 
Her skin was dark, but rich and dusky with life and 
red blood that ebbed and flowed with her shyness. 
Her lips were full, and of a dark cherry red. Her eyes 
were deep, rather musing, and furnished with the most 
gloriously tangling of eyelashes. Dick went into ec- 
stasies, took several photographs which did not turn 
out well, and made one sketch which did. Perpetu- 
ally did he bewail the absence of oils. The type is 
not uncommon, but its beauty rarely remains perfect 
after the fifteenth year. 

We made our ceremonious adieux to the Madame, 
and started back to town under the guidance of one 
of the boys, who promised us a short cut. 

This youth proved to be filled with the old wan- 
dering spirit that lures so many of his race into the 
wilderness life. He confided to us as we walked that 
he liked to tramp extended distances, and that the 
days were really not made long enough for those who 
had to return home at night. 

i45 



THE FOREST 

" I is been top of dose hills," he said. " Bime by I 
mak' heem go to dose lak' beyon'. " 

He told us that some day he hoped to go out with 
the fur traders. In his vocabulary " I wish " occurred 
with such wistful frequency that finally I inquired 
curiously what use he would make of the Fairy Gift. 

" If you could have just one wish come true, 
Pierre," I asked, " what would you desire *? " 

His answer came without a moment's hesitation. 

" I is lak' be one giant," said he. 

" Why *? " I demanded. 

"So I can mak' heem de walk far," he replied, 
simply. 

I was tempted to point out to him the fact that 
big men do not outlast the little men, and that vast 
strength rarely endures, but then a better feeling per- 
suaded me to leave him his illusions. The power, 
even in fancy, of striding on seven-league boots across 
the fascinations spread out below his kindling vision 
from "dose hills" was too precious a possession 
lightly to be taken away. 

Strangely enough, though his woodcraft naturally 
was not inconsiderable, it did not hold his paramount 
interest. He knew something about animals and 
their ways and their methods of capture, but the 
chase did not appeal strongly to him, nor apparently 
did he possess much skill along that line. He liked 
the actual physical labor, the walking, the paddling, 
the tump-line, the camp-making, the new country, 

146 



THE HABITANTS 

the companionship of the wild life, the wilderness as 
a whole rather than in any one of its single aspects 
as Fish Pond, Game Preserve, Picture Gallery. In 
this he showed the true spirit of the voyageur. I 
should confidently look to meet him in another ten 
years — if threats of railroads spare the Far North so 
long — girdled with the red sash, shod in silent moc- 
casins, bending beneath the portage load, trolling 
Isabeau to the silent land somewhere under the 
Arctic Circle. The French of the North have never 
been great fighters nor great hunters, in the terms of 
Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen, but they have laughed in 
farther places. 



i47 



THE RIVER 




XII 
THE RIVER 

AT a certain spot on the North Shore — I am 
not going to tell you where — you board one 
of the two or three fishing-steamers that collect from 
the different stations the big ice-boxes of Lake Supe- 
rior whitefish. After a certain number of hours — I 
am not going to tell you how many — your craft 
will turn in toward a semicircle of bold, beautiful 
hills, that seem at first to be many less miles distant 
than the reality, and at the last to be many more 
miles remote than is the fact. From the prow you 
will make out first a uniform velvet green ; then the 
differentiation of many shades; then the dull neutrals 
of rocks and crags; finally the narrow white of a 
pebble beach against which the waves utter continu- 
ally a rattling undertone. The steamer pushes boldly 
in. The cool green of the water underneath changes 
to gray. Suddenly you make out the bottom, as 
through a thick green glass, and the big suckers and 
catfish idling over its riffled sands, inconceivably far 
down through the unbelievably clear liquid. So ab- 
sorbed are you in this marvelous clarity that a slight 

151 



THE FOREST 

grinding jar alone brings you to yourself. The 
steamer's nose is actually touching the white strip of 
pebbles ! 

Now you can do one of a number of things. The 
forest slants down to your feet in dwindling scrub, 
which half conceals an abandoned log structure. 
This latter is the old Hudson's Bay post. Behind it 
is the Fur Trail, and the Fur Trail will take you 
three miles to Burned Rock Pool, where are spring 
water and mighty trout. But again, half a mile to 
the left, is the mouth of the River. And the River 
meanders charmingly through the woods of the flat 
country over numberless riffles and rapids, beneath 
various steep gravel banks, until it sweeps boldly 
under the cliff of the first high hill. There a rugged 
precipice rises sheer and jagged and damp-dark to 
overhanging trees clinging to the shoulder of the 
mountain. And precisely at that spot is a bend where 
the water hits square, to divide right and left in 
whiteness, to swirl into convolutions of foam, to lurk 
darkly for a moment on the edge of tumult before 
racing away. And there you can stand hip-deep, and 
just reach the eddy foam with a cast tied craftily of 
Royal Coachman, Parmachenee Belle, and Montreal. 

From that point you are with the hills. They draw 
back to leave wide forest, but always they return to 
the River — as you would return season after season 
were I to tell you how — throwing across your woods- 
progress a sheer cliff forty or fifty feet high, shouldering 

J 5 2 



THE RIVER 

you incontinently into the necessity of fording to the 
other side. More and more jealous they become as 
you penetrate, until at the Big Falls they close in 
entirely, warning you that here they take the wilder- 
ness to themselves. At the Big Falls anglers make 
their last camp. About the fire they may discuss idly 
various academic questions — as to whether the great 
inaccessible pool below the Falls really contains the 
legendary Biggest Trout ; what direction the River 
takes above ; whether it really becomes nothing but 
a series of stagnant pools connected by sluggish water- 
reaches ; whether there are any trout above the Falls ; 
and so on. 

These questions, as I have said, are merely aca- 
demic. Your true angler is a philosopher. Enough 
is to him worth fifteen courses, and if the finite mind 
of man could imagine anything to be desired as an 
addition to his present possessions on the River, he 
at least knows nothing of it. Already he commands 
ten miles of water — swift, clear water — running 
over stone, through a freshet bed so many hundreds 
of feet wide that he has forgotten what it means to 
guard his back cast. It is to be waded in the riffles, so 
that he can cross from one shore to the other as the 
mood suits him. One bank is apt to be precipitous, the 
other to stretch away in a mile or so of the coolest, 
greenest, stillest primeval forest to be imagined. Thus 
he can cut across the wide bends of the River, should 
he so desire, and should haste be necessary to make 

i53 



THE FOREST 

camp before dark. And, last, but not least by any 
manner of means, there are trout. 

I mean real trout — big fellows, the kind the fish- 
ers of little streams dream of but awake to call Mor- 
pheus a liar, just as they are too polite to call you a 
liar when you are so indiscreet as to tell them a few 
plain facts. I have one solemnly attested and witnessed 
record of twenty-nine inches, caught in running water. 
I saw a friend land on one cast three whose aggre- 
gate weight was four and one half pounds. I wit- 
nessed, and partly shared, an exciting struggle in 
which three fish on three rods were played in the same 
pool at the same time. They weighed just fourteen 
pounds. One pool, a backset, was known as the Idiot's 
Delight, because any one could catch fish there. I have 
lain on my stomach at the Burned Rock Pool and 
seen the great fish lying so close together as nearly to 
cover the bottom, rank after rank of them, and the 
smallest not under a half pound. As to the largest — 
well, every true fisherman knows him ! 

So it came about for many years that the natural bar- 
rier interposed by the Big Falls successfully turned the 
idle tide of anglers' exploration. Beyond them lay an 
unknown country, but you had to climb cruelly to 
see it, and you could n't gain above what you already 
had in any case. The nearest settlement was nearly 
sixty miles away, so even added isolation had not its 
usual quickening effect on camper's effort. The River 
is visited by few, anyway. An occasional adventurous 

J 54 



THE RIVER 

steam yacht pauses at the mouth, fishes a few little 
ones from the shallow pools there, or a few big ones 
from the reefs, and pushes on. It never dreams of 
sending an expedition to the interior. Our own peo- 
ple, and two other parties, are all I know of who visit 
the River regularly. Our camp-sites alone break the 
forest ; our blazes alone continue the initial short cut 
of the Fur Trail; our names alone distinguish the 
various pools. We had always been satisfied to com- 
promise with the frowning Hills. In return for the 
delicious necks and points and forest areas through 
which our clipped trails ran, we had tacitly respected 
the mystery of the upper reaches. 

This year, however, a number of unusual condi- 
tions changed our spirit. I have perhaps neglected 
to state that our trip up to now had been a rather 
singularly damp one. Of the first fourteen days 
twelve had been rainy. This was only a slightly ex- 
aggerated sample for the rest of the time. As a con- 
sequence we found the River filled even to the limit 
of its freshet banks. The broad borders of stone 
beach between the stream's edge and the bushes had 
quite disappeared ; the riffles had become rapids, and 
the rapids roaring torrents ; the bends boiled angrily 
with a smashing eddy that sucked air into pirouetting 
cavities inches in depth. Plainly, fly-fishing was out 
of the question. No self-respecting trout would rise 
to the surface of such a moil, or abandon for sylla- 
bubs of tinsel the magnificent solidities of ground- 

*55 



THE FOREST 

bait such a freshet would bring down from the hills. 
Also the River was unfordable. 

We made camp at the mouth and consulted to- 
gether. Billy, the half-breed who had joined us for 
the labor of a permanent camp, shook his head. 

" I t'ink one week, ten day," he vouchsafed. 
" P'rhaps she go down den. We mus' wait." 

We did not want to wait ; the idleness of a per- 
manent camp is the most deadly in the world. 

" Billy," said I, " have you ever been above the 
Big Falls «" 

The half-breed's eyes flashed. 

" Non," he replied, simply. "Ba, I lak' mak' heem 
firs' rate." 

" All right, Billy ; we '11 do it." 

The next day it rained, and the River went up two 
inches. The morning following was fair enough, but 
so cold you could see your breath. We began to 
experiment. 

Now, this expedition had become a fishing vaca- 
tion, so we had all the comforts of home with us. 
When said comforts of home were laden into the 
canoe, there remained forward and aft just about one 
square foot of space for Billy and me, and not over 
two inches of freeboard for the River. We could 
not stand up and pole ; tracking with a tow-line was 
out of the question, because there existed no banks 
on which to walk ; the current was too swift for pad- 
dling. So we knelt and poled. We knew it before, 

156 



THE RIVER 

but we had to be convinced by trial that two inches 
of freeboard will dip under the most gingerly effort. 
It did so. We groaned, stepped out into ice-water 
up to our waists, and so began the day's journey with 
fleeting reference to Dante's nethermost hell. 

Next the shore the water was most of the time a 
little above our knees, but the swirl of a rushing cur- 
rent brought an apron of foam to our hips. Billy took 
the bow and pulled; I took the stern and pushed. 
In places our combined efforts could but just coun- 
terbalance the strength of the current. Then Billy 
had to hang on until I could get my shoulder against 
the stern for a mighty heave, the few inches gain of 
which he would guard as jealously as possible, until 
I could get into position for another shove. At other 
places we were in nearly to our armpits, but close 
under the banks where we could help ourselves by 
seizing bushes. 

Sometimes I lost my footing entirely and trailed 
out behind like a streamer; sometimes Billy would 
be swept away, the canoe's bow would swing down- 
stream, and I would have to dig my heels and hang 
on until he had floundered upright. Fortunately for 
our provisions, this never happened to both at the 
same time. The difficulties were still further com- 
plicated by the fact that our feet speedily became so 
numb from the cold that we could not feel the bot- 
tom, and so were much inclined to aimless stum- 
blings. By and by we got out and kicked trees to 

iS7 



THE FOREST 

start the circulation. In the mean time the sun had 
retired behind thick leaden clouds. 

At the First Bend we were forced to carry some 
fifty feet. There the River rushed down in a smooth 
apron straight against the cliff, where its force actually 
raised the mass of water a good three feet higher than 
the level of the surrounding pool. I tied on a bait- 
hook, and two cartridges for sinkers, and in fifteen 
minutes had caught three trout, one of which weighed 
three pounds, and the others two pounds and a pound 
and a half respectively. At this point Dick and Deuce, 
who had been paralleling through the woods, joined 
us. We broiled the trout, and boiled tea, and shivered 
as near the fire as we could. That afternoon, by dint 
of labor and labor, and yet more labor, we made 
Burned Rock, and there we camped for the night, 
utterly beaten out by about as hard a day's travel as 
a man would want to undertake. 

The following day was even worse, for as the nat- 
ural bed of the River narrowed, we found less and 
less footing and swifter and swifter water. The jour- 
ney to Burned Rock had been a matter of dogged 
hard work ; this was an affair of alertness, of taking 
advantage of every little eddy, of breathless suspense 
during long seconds while the question of supremacy 
between our strength and the stream's was being de- 
bated. And the thermometer must have registered 
well towards freezing. Three times we were forced 
to cross the River in order to get even precarious 

158 



THE RIVER 

footing. Those were the really doubtful moments. 
We had to get in carefully, to sit craftily, and to 
paddle gingerly and firmly, without attempting to 
counteract the downward sweep of the current. All 
our energies and care were given to preventing those 
miserable curling little waves from overtopping our 
precious two inches, and that miserable little canoe 
from departing even by a hair's breadth from the 
exactly level keel. Where we were going did not 
matter. After an interminable interval the tail of 
our eyes would catch the sway of bushes near at 
hand. 

" Now," Billy would mutter abstractedly. 

With one accord we would arise from six inches 
of wet and step swiftly into the River. The lightened 
canoe would strain back ; we would brace our legs. 
The traverse was accomplished. 

Being thus under the other bank, I would hold the 
canoe while Billy, astraddle the other end for the pur- 
pose of depressing the water to within reach of his 
hand, would bail away the consequences of our cross- 
ing. Then we would make up the quarter of a mile 
we had lost. 

We quit at the Organ Pool about three o'clock of 
the afternoon. Not much was said that evening. 

The day following we tied into it again. This time 
we put Dick and Deuce on an old Indian trail that 
promised a short cut, with instructions to wait at the 
end of it. In the joyous anticipation of another wet 

*59 



THE FOREST 

day we forgot they had never before followed an In- 
dian trail. Let us now turn aside to the adventures 
of Dick and Deuce. 

Be it premised here that Dick is a regular Indian 
of taciturnity when it becomes a question of his 
own experience, so that for a long time we knew of 
what follows but the single explanatory monosyl- 
lable which you shall read in due time. But Dick has 
a beloved uncle. In moments of expansion to this 
relative after his return he held forth as to the hap- 
penings of that morning. 

Dick and the setter managed the Indian trail for 
about twenty rods. They thought they managed it 
for perhaps twice that distance. Then it became 
borne in on them that the bushes went back, the faint 
knife-clippings, and the half weather-browned brush- 
cuttings that alone constitute an Indian trail had taken 
another direction, and that they had now their own 
way to make through the forest. Dick knew the 
direction well enough, so he broke ahead confidently. 
After a half-hour's walk he crossed a tiny streamlet. 
After another half-hour's walk he came to another. 
It was flowing the wrong way. 

Dick did not understand this. He had never known 
of little streams flowing away from rivers and towards 
eight-hundred-foot hills. This might be a loop, of 
course. He resolved to follow it upstream far enough 
to settle the point. The following brought him in 
time to a soggy little thicket with three areas of moss- 

160 



THE RIVER 

covered mud and two round, pellucid pools of water 
about a foot in diameter. As the little stream had 
wound and twisted, Dick had by now lost entirely 
his sense of direction. He fished out his compass and 
set it on a rock. The River flows nearly northeast to 
the Big Falls, and Dick knew himself to be some- 
where east of the River. The compass appeared to 
be wrong. Dick was a youth of sense, so he did not 
quarrel with the compass ; he merely became doubt- 
ful as to which was the north end of the needle — the 
white or the black. After a few moments' puzzling 
he was quite at sea, and could no more remember 
how he had been taught as to this than you can clinch 
the spelling of a doubtful word after you have tried 
on paper a dozen variations. But being a youth of 
sense, he did not desert the streamlet. 

After a short half-mile of stumbling the apparent 
wrong direction in the brook's bed, he came to the 
River. The River was also flowing the wrong way, 
and uphill. Dick sat down and covered his eyes with 
his hands, as I had told him to do in like instance, 
and so managed to swing the country around where 
it belonged. 

Now here was the River — and Dick resolved to 
desert it for no more short cuts — but where was the 
canoe ? 

This point remained unsettled in Dick's mind, or 
rather it was alternately settled in two ways. Some- 
times the boy concluded we must be still below him, 

161 



THE FOREST 

so he would sit on a rock to wait. Then, after a few 
moments, inactivity would bring him panic. The 
canoe must have passed this point long since, and 
every second he wasted stupidly sitting on that stone 
separated him farther from his friends and from food. 
Then he would tear madly through the forest. Deuce 
enjoyed this game, but Dick did not. 

In time Dick found his further pr6gress along the 
banks cut off by a hill. The hill ended abruptly at 
the water's edge in a sheer rock cliff thirty feet high. 
This was in reality the end of the Indian trail short 
cut — the point where Dick was to meet us — but he 
did not know it. He happened for the moment to be 
obsessed by one of his canoe-upstream panics, so he 
turned inland to a spot where the hill appeared climb- 
able, and started in to surmount the obstruction. 

This was comparatively easy at first. Then the 
shoulder of the cliff intervened. Dick mounted still a 
little higher up the hill, then higher, then still higher. 
Far down to his left, through the trees, broiled the 
River. The slope of the hill to it had become steeper 
than a roof, and at the edge of the eaves came a cliff 
drop of thirty feet. Dick picked his way gingerly 
over curving moss-beds, assisting his balance by a 
number of little cedar-trees. Then something hap- 
pened. 

Dick says the side of the hill slid out from under 
him. The fact of the matter is, probably, the skin- 
moss over loose rounded stones gave way. Dick sat 

162 



THE RIVER 

down and began slowly to bump down the slant of 
the roof. He never really lost his equilibrium, nor 
until the last ten feet did he abandon the hope of 
checking his descent. Sometimes he did actually suc- 
ceed in stopping himself for a moment ; but on his 
attempting to follow up the advantage, the moss 
always slipped or the sapling let go a tenuous hold 
and he continued on down. At last the River flashed 
out below him. He saw the sheer drop. He saw the 
boiling eddies of the Halfway Pool, capable of suck- 
ing down a saw-log. Then, with a final rush of loose 
round stones, he shot the chutes feet first into space. 

In the mean time Billy and I repeated our experi- 
ence of the two previous days, with a few variations 
caused by the necessity of passing two exceptionally 
ugly rapids whose banks left little footing. We did 
this precariously, with a rope. The cold water was 
beginning to tell on our vitality, so that twice we 
went ashore and made hot tea. Just below the Half- 
way Pool we began to do a little figuring ahead, 
which is a bad thing. The Halfway Pool meant 
much inevitable labor, with its two swift rapids and 
its swirling eddies, as sedulously to be avoided as 
so many steel bear-traps. Then there were a dozen 
others, and the three miles of riffles, and all the rest 
of it. At our present rate it would take us a week to 
make the Falls. 

Below the Halfway Pool we looked for Dick. 
He was not to be seen. This made us cross. At the 

163 



THE FOREST 

Halfway Pool we intended to unload for portage, 
and also to ferry over Dick and the setter in the light- 
ened canoe. The tardiness of Dick delayed the game. 

However, we drew ashore to the little clearing of 
the Halfway Camp, made the year before, and wearily 
discharged our cargo. Suddenly, upstream, and ap- 
parently up in the air, we heard distinctly the excited 
yap of a dog. Billy and I looked at each other. Then 
we looked upstream. 

Close under the perpendicular wall of rock and 
fifty feet from the end of it, waist deep in water that 
swirled angrily about him, stood Dick. 

I knew well enough what he was standing on — a 
little ledge of shale not over five or six feet in length 
and two feet wide — for in lower water I had often 
from its advantage cast a fly down below the big 
boulder. But I knew it to be surrounded by water 
fifteen feet deep. It was impossible to wade to the 
spot ; impossible to swim to it. And why in the name 
of all the woods gods would a man want to wade or 
swim to it if he could *? The affair, to our cold-be- 
numbed intellects, was simply incomprehensible. 

Billy and I spoke no word. We silently, perhaps 
a little fearfully, launched the empty canoe. Then we 
went into a space of water whose treading proved us 
no angels. From the slack water under the cliff we 
took another look. It was indeed Dick. He carried 
a rod-case in one hand. His fish-creel lay against his 
hip. His broad hat sat accurately level on his head. 

164 



THE RIVER 

His face was imperturbable. Above, Deuce agon- 
ized, afraid to leap into the stream, but convinced that 
his duty required him to do so. 

We steadied the canoe while Dick climbed in. 
You would have thought he was embarking at the 
regularly appointed rendezvous. In silence we shot 
the rapids, and collected Deuce from the end of the 
trail, whither he followed us. In silence we worked 
our way across to where our duffel lay scattered. In 
silence we disembarked. 

" In Heaven's name, Dick," I demanded at last, 
" how did you get there ? " 

" Fell," said he, succinctly. And that was all. 



165 



THE HILLS 




XIII 
THE HILLS 

WE explained carefully to Dick that he had lit 
on the only spot in the Halfway Pool where 
the water was at once deep enough to break his fall 
and not too deep to stand in. We also pointed out 
that he had escaped being telescoped or drowned by 
the merest hair's breadth. From this we drew moral 
conclusions. It did us good, but undoubtedly Dick 
knew it already. 

Now we gave our attention to the wetness of gar- 
ments, for we were chilled blue. A big fire and a 
clothes-rack of forked sticks and a sapling, an open- 
air change, a lunch of hot tea and trout and cold 
galette and beans, a pipe — and then the inevitable 
summing up. 

We had in two and a half days made the easier 
half of the distance to the Falls. At this rate we would 
consume a week or more in reaching the starting- 
point of our explorations. It was a question whether 
we could stand a week of ice-water and the heavy 
labor combined. Ordinarily we might be able to 
abandon the canoe and push on afoot, as we were 

169 



THE FOREST 

accustomed to do when trout-fishing, but that in- 
volved fording the river three times — a feat mani- 
festly impossible in present freshet conditions. 

" I t'ink we quit heem," said Billy. 

But then I was seized with an inspiration. Judg- 
ing by the configuration of the hills, the River bent 
sharply above the Falls. Why would it not be pos- 
sible to cut loose entirely at this point, to strike across 
through the forest, and so to come out on the upper 
reaches'? Remained only the probability of our be- 
ing able, encumbered by a pack, to scale the moun- 
tains. 

" Billy," said I, " have you ever been over in those 
hills?" 

" No," said he. 

" Do you know anything about the country *? Are 
there any trails *? " 

" Dat countree is belong Tawabinisay. He know 
heem. I don' know heem. I t'ink he is have many 
hills, some lak'." 

"Do you think we can climb those hills with 
packs'?" 

Billy cast a doubtful glance on Dick. Then his 
eye lit up. 

" Tawabinisay is tell me 'bout dat Lak' Kawagama. 
P'rhaps we fine heem." 

In so saying Billy decided the attempt. What 
angler on the River has not discussed — again idly, 
again academically — that mysterious Lake alive with 

170 



THE HILLS 

the burnished copper trout — lying hidden and won- 
derful in the high hills, clear as crystal, bottomed with 
gravel like a fountain, shaped like a great crescent 
whose curves were haunted of forest trees grim and 
awesome with the solemnity of the primeval ? That 
its exact location was known to Tawabinisay alone, 
that the trail to it was purposely blinded and mud- 
dled with the crossing of many little ponds, that the 
route was laborious — all those things, along with the 
minor details so dear to winter fire-chats, were mat- 
ters of notoriety. Probably more expeditions to Ka- 
wagama have been planned — in February — than 
would fill a volume with an account of anticipated 
adventures. Only, none of them ever came off. We 
were accustomed to gaze at the forbidden cliff ram- 
parts of the hills, to think of the Idiot's Delight, and 
the Halfway Pool, and the Organ Pool, and the 
Burned Rock Pool, and the Rolling Stone Pool, and 
all the rest of them even up to the Big Falls — and 
so we would quietly allow our February plannings to 
lapse. One man Tawabinisay had honored. But this 
man, named Clement, a banker from Peoria, had 
proved unworthy. Tawabinisay told how he caught 
trout, many, many trout, and piled them on the 
shores of Kawagama to defile the air. Subsequently 
this same " sportsman " buried another big catch on 
the beach of Superior. These and other exploits 
finally earned him his exclusion from the delectable 
land. I give his name because I have personally 

171 



THE FOREST 

talked with his guides, and heard their circumstantial 
accounts of his performances. Unless three or four 
woodsmen are fearful liars, I do Mr. Clement no in- 
justice. Since then Tawabinisay had hidden himself 
behind his impenetrable grin. 

So you can easily see that the discovery of Ka- 
wagama would be a feat worthy even high hills. 

That afternoon we rested and made our cache. A 
cache in the forest country is simply a heavily con- 
structed rustic platform on which provisions and 
clothing are laid and wrapped completely about in 
sheets of canoe bark tied firmly with strips of cedar 
bark, or withes made from a bush whose appearance 
I know well, but whose name I cannot say. In this 
receptacle we left all our canned goods, our extra 
clothing, and our Dutch oven. We retained for trans- 
portation some pork, flour, rice, baking-powder, oat- 
meal, sugar, and tea; cooking-utensils, blankets, the 
tent, fishing-tackle, and the little pistol. As we were 
about to go into the high country where presumably 
both game and fish might lack, we were forced to 
take a full supply for four — counting Deuce as one 
— to last ten days. The packs counted up about one 
hundred and fifteen pounds of grub, twenty pounds 
of blankets, ten of tent, say eight or ten of hardware 
including the axe, about twenty of duffel. This was 
further increased by the idiosyncrasy of Billy. He, like 
most woodsmen, was wedded to a single utterly foolish 
article of personal belonging, which he worshiped as 

172 



THE HILLS 

a fetish, and without which he was unhappy. In his 
case it was a huge winter overcoat that must have 
weighed fifteen pounds. The total amounted to about 
one hundred and ninety pounds. We gave Dick 
twenty, I took seventy-six, and Billy shouldered the 
rest. 

The carrying we did with the universal tump-line. 
This is usually described as a strap passed about a 
pack and across the forehead of the bearer. The de- 
scription is incorrect. It passes across the top of the 
head. The weight should rest on the small of the 
back just above the hips, not on the broad of the back 
as most beginners place it. Then the chin should be 
dropped, the body slanted sharply forward — and you 
may be able to stagger forty rods at your first at- 
tempt. 

Use soon accustoms you to carrying, however. 
The first time I ever did any packing I had a hard 
time stumbling a few hundred feet over a hill port- 
age with just fifty pounds on my back. By the end 
of that same trip I could carry a hundred pounds and 
a lot of miscellaneous traps, like canoe-poles and 
guns, without serious inconvenience and over a long 
portage. This quickly gained power comes partly 
from a strengthening of the muscles of the neck, but 
more from a mastery of balance. A pack can twist 
you as suddenly and expertly on your back as the 
best of wrestlers. It has a head lock on you, and you 
have to go or break your neck. After a time you 

i73 



THE FOREST 

adjust your movements, just as after a time you can 
travel on snow-shoes through heavy down timber 
without taking conscious thought as to the placing 
of your feet. 

But at first packing is as near infernal punishment 
as merely mundane conditions can compass. Sixteen 
brand-new muscles ache, at first dully, then sharply, 
then intolerably, until it seems you cannot bear it 
another second. You are unable to keep your feet. 
A stagger means an effort at recovery, and an effort 
at recovery means that you trip when you place your 
feet, and that means, if you are lucky enough not to 
be thrown, an extra tweak for every one of the six- 
teen new muscles. At first you rest every time you 
feel tired. Then you begin to feel very tired every 
fifty feet. Then you have to do the best you can, 
and prove the pluck that is in you. 

Mr. Tom Friant, an old woodsman of wide ex- 
perience, has often told me with relish of his first try 
at carrying. He had about sixty pounds, and his 
companion double that amount. Mr. Friant stood 
it a few centuries and then sat down. He could n't 
have moved another step if a gun had been at his 
ear. 

" What 's the matter ? " asked his companion. 

"Del," said Friant, "I'm all in. I can't navigate. 
Here 's where I quit." 

" Can't you carry her any farther *? " 

" Not an inch." 

174 



THE HILLS 

" Well, pile her on. I '11 carry her for you." 

Friant looked at him a moment in silent amaze- 
ment. 

"Do you mean to say that you are going to carry 
your pack and mine too ? " 

" That 's what I mean to say. I '11 do it if I have 
to." 

Friant drew a long breath. 

" Well," said he at last, " if a little sawed-off cuss 
like you can wiggle under a hundred and eighty, I 
guess I can make it under sixty." 

" That 's right," said Del, imperturbably. " If you 
think you can, you can." 

" And I did," ends Friant with a chuckle. 

Therein lies the whole secret. The work is irk- 
some, sometimes even painful, but if you think you 
can do it, you can, for though great is the protest of 
the human frame against what it considers abuse, 
greater is the power of a man's grit. 

We carried the canoe above the larger eddies, where 
we embarked ourselves and our packs for traverse, 
leaving Deuce under strict command to await a sec- 
ond trip. Deuce disregarded the strict command. 
From disobedience came great peril, for when he at- 
tempted to swim across after us he was carried down- 
stream, involved in a whirlpool, sucked under, and 
nearly drowned. We could do nothing but watch. 
When finally the River spewed out a frightened and 
bedraggled dog, we drew a breath of very genuine 

!75 



THE FOREST 

relief, for Deuce was dear to us through much asso- 
ciation. 

The canoe we turned bottom up and left in the 
bushes, and so we set off through the forest. 

At the end of fifteen minutes we began to mount 
a gentle ascent. The gentle ascent speedily became 
a sharp slope, the sharp slope an abrupt hill, and the 
latter finally an almost sheer face of rock and thin 
soil. We laid hold doggedly of little cedars ; we dug 
our fingers into little crevices, and felt for the same 
with our toes ; we perspired in streams and breathed 
in gasps ; we held the strained muscles of our necks 
rigid, for the twisting of a pack meant here a danger- 
ous fall; we flattened ourselves against the face of 
the mountain with always the heavy, ceaseless pull of 
the tump-line attempting to tear us backward from 
our holds. And so at last, when the muscles of our 
thighs refused to strengthen our legs for the ascent 
of another foot, we would turn our backs to the slant 
and sink gratefully into the only real luxury in the 
world. 

For be it known that real luxury cannot be bought; 
it must be worked for. I refer to luxury as the exqui- 
site savor of a pleasant sensation. The keenest sense- 
impressions are undoubtedly those of contrast. In 
looking back over a variety of experience, I have no 
hesitation at all in selecting as the moment in which 
I have experienced the liveliest physical pleasure one 
hot afternoon in July. The thermometer might have 

176 



THE HILLS 

stood anywhere. We would have placed childlike 
trust in any of its statements, even three figures great. 
Our way had led through unbroken forest oppressed 
by low brush and an underfooting of brakes. There 
had been hills. Our clothes were wringing wet, to 
the last stitch ; even the leather of the tump-line was 
saturated. The hot air we gulped down did not seem 
to satisfy our craving for oxygen any more than 
lukewarm water ever seems to cut a real thirst. The 
woods were literally like an oven in their hot dryness. 
Finally we skirted a little hill, and at the base of that 
hill a great tree had fallen, and through the aperture 
thus made in the forest a tiny current of cool air 
flowed like a stream. It was not a great current, nor 
a wide ; if we moved three feet in any direction, we 
were out of it. But we sat us down directly across 
its flow. And never have dinners or wines or men or 
women, or talks of books or scenery or adventure or 
sport, or the softest, daintiest refinements of man's in- 
vention given me the half of luxury I drank in from 
that little breeze. So the commonest things — a dash 
of cool water on the wrists, a gulp of hot tea, a warm 
dry blanket, a whirl of tobacco, a ray of sunshine — 
are more really the luxuries than all the comforts and 
sybaritisms we buy. Undoubtedly the latter would 
also rise to the higher category if we were to work 
for their essence instead of merely signing club checks 
or paying party calls for them. 

Which means that when we three would rest our 
177 



THE FOREST 

packs against the side of that hill, and drop our head- 
straps below our chins, we were not at all to be pitied, 
even though the forest growth denied us the encour- 
agement of knowing how much farther we had to go. 

Before us the trees dropped away rapidly, so that 
twenty feet out in a straight line we were looking 
directly into their tops. There, quite on an equality 
with their own airy estate, we could watch the fly- 
catchers and warblers conducting their small affairs of 
the chase. It lent us the illusion of imponderability ; 
we felt that we too might be able to rest securely on 
graceful gossamer twigs. And sometimes, through a 
chance opening, we could see down over billows of 
waving leaves to a single little spot of blue, like a 
turquoise sunk in folds of green velvet, which meant 
that the River was dropping below us. This, in the 
mercy of the Red Gods, was meant as encouragement. 

The time came, however, when the ramparts we 
scaled rose sheer and bare in impregnability. Nothing 
could be done on the straight line, so we turned sharp 
to the north. The way was difficult, for it lay over 
great fragments of rock stricken from the cliff by 
winter, and further rendered treacherous by the moss 
and wet by a thousand trickles of water. At the end 
of one hour we found what might be called a ravine 
if you happened not to be particular, or a steep cleft 
in the precipice if you were. Here we deserted the 
open air for piled-up brushy tangles, many sharp-cor- 
nered rock fragments, and a choked streamlet. Finally 

178 



THE HILLS 

the whole outfit abruptly ceased. We climbed ten 
feet of crevices and stood on the ridge. 

The forest trees shut us in our own little area, so 
that we were for the moment unable to look abroad 
over the country. 

The descent, abrupt where we had mounted, 
stretched away gently toward the north and west. 
And on that slope, protected as it was from the se- 
verer storms that sweep up the open valleys in winter, 
stood the most magnificent primeval forest it has ever 
been my fortune to behold. The huge maple, beech, 
and birch trees lifted column-like straight up to a 
lucent green canopy, always twinkling and shifting in 
the wind and the sunlight. Below grew a thin screen 
of underbrush, through which we had no difficulty at 
all in pushing, but which threw about us face-high a 
tender green partition. The effect was that of a pew 
in an old-fashioned church, so that, though we shared 
the upper stillnesses, a certain delightful privacy of 
our own seemed assured us. This privacy we knew 
to be assured also to many creatures besides ourselves. 
On the other side of the screen of broad leaves we 
sensed the presence of life. It did not intrude on us, 
nor were we permitted to intrude on it. But it was 
there. We heard it rustling, pattering, scrambling, 
whispering, scurrying with a rush of wings. More 
subtly we felt it, as one knows of a presence in a dark- 
ened room. By the exercise of imagination and ex- 
perience we identified it in its manifestations — the 

179 



THE FOREST 

squirrel, the partridge, the weasel, the spruce hens, 
once or twice the deer. We knew it saw us perfectly, 
although we could not see it, and that gave us an im- 
pression of companionship, so the forest was not lonely. 

Next to this double sense of isolation and company 
was the feeling of transparent shadow. The forest was 
thick and cool. Only rarely did the sun find an ori- 
fice in the roof through which to pour a splash of 
liquid gold. All the rest was in shadow. But the 
shadow was that of the bottom of the sea — cool, 
green, and above all transparent. We saw into the 
depth of it, but dimly, as we would see into the green 
recesses of a tropic ocean. It possessed the same li- 
quid quality. Finally the illusion overcame us com- 
pletely. We bathed in the shadows as though they 
were palpable, and from that came great refreshment. 

Under foot the soil was springy with the mold of 
numberless autumns. The axe had never hurried slow 
old servant decay. Once in a while we came across a 
prostrate trunk lying in the trough of destruction its 
fall had occasioned. But the rest of the time we trod 
a carpet to the making of which centuries of dead 
forest warriors had wrapped themselves in mold and 
soft moss and gentle dissolution. Sometimes a faint 
rounded shell of former fair proportion swelled above 
the level, to crumble to punkwood at the lightest 
touch of our feet. Or, again, the simulacrum of a tree- 
trunk would bravely oppose our path, only to melt 
away into nothing, like the opposing phantoms of 

180 



THE HILLS 

^Eneas, when we placed a knee against it for the sur- 
mounting. 

If the pine woods be characterized by cathedral 
solemnity, and the cedars and tamaracks by certain 
horrifical gloom, and the popples by a silvery sun- 
shine, and the berry-clearings by grateful heat and 
the homely manner of familiar birds, then the great 
hardwood must be known as the dwelling-place of 
transparent shadows, of cool green lucence, and the 
repository of immemorial cheerful forest tradition 
which the traveler can hear of, but which he is never 
permitted actually to know. 

In this lovable mystery we journeyed all the rest 
of that morning. The packs were heavy with the first 
day's weight, and we were tired from our climb ; but 
the deep physical joy of going on and ever on into 
unknown valleys, down a long, gentle slope that must 
lead somewhere, through things animate and things 
of an almost animate life, opening silently before us 
to give us passage, and closing as silently behind us 
after we had passed — these made us forget our aches 
and fatigues for the moment. 

At noon we boiled tea near a little spring of clear, 
cold water. As yet we had no opportunity of seeing 
farther than the closing in of many trees. We were, 
as far as external appearances went, no more advanced 
than our first resting-place after surmounting the ridge. 
This effect is constant in the great forests. You are 
in a treadmill — though a pleasant one withal. Your 

181 



THE FOREST 

camp of to-day differs only in non-essentials from that 
of yesterday, and your camp of to-morrow will prob- 
ably be almost exactly like to-day's. Only when you 
reach your objective point do you come to a full 
realization that you have not been the Sisyphus of 
the Red Gods. 

Deuce returning from exploration brought indubi- 
table evidence of porcupines. We picked the barbed 
little weapons from his face and nose and tongue with 
much difficulty for ourselves and much pain for Deuce. 
We offered consolation by voicing for his dumbness 
his undoubted intention to avoid all future porcu- 
pines. Then we took up the afternoon tramp. 

Now at last through the trees appeared the gleam 
of water. Tawabinisay had said that Kawagamawas 
the only lake in its district. We therefore became 
quite excited at this sapphire promise. Our packs 
were thrown aside, and like school-boys we raced 
down the declivity to the shore. 



182 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 




XIV 
ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

WE found ourselves peering through the thicket 
at a little reed and grass-grown body of water 
a few acres in extent. A short detour to the right 
led us to an outlet — a brook of a width and dash 
that convinced us the little pond was only a stopping- 
place in the stream, and not a head water as we had 
at first imagined. Then a nearer approach led us past 
pointed tree -stumps exquisitely chiseled with the 
marks of teeth, so we knew we looked, not on a nat- 
ural pond, but on the work of beavers. 

I examined the dam more closely. It was a mar- 
vel of engineering skill in the accuracy with which the 
big trees had been felled exactly along the most ef- 
fective lines, the efficiency of the filling in, and the 
just estimate of the waste water to be allowed. We 
named the place obviously Beaver Pond, resumed 
our packs, and pushed on. 

Now I must be permitted to celebrate by a little 
the pluck of Dick. He was quite unused to the tump- 
line ; comparatively inexperienced in woods-walking ; 
and weighed but one hundred and thirty-five pounds. 

*85 



THE FOREST 

Yet not once in the course of that trip did he bewail 
his fate. Towards the close of this first afternoon I 
dropped behind to see how he was making it. The 
boy had his head down, his lips shut tight together, 
his legs well straddled apart. As I watched he stum- 
bled badly over the merest twig. 

" Dick," said I, " are you tired ? " 

" Yes," he confessed, frankly. 

" Can you make it another half hour % " 

" I guess so ; I '11 try." 

At the end of the half hour we dropped our packs. 
Dick had manifested no impatience — not once had 
he even asked how nearly time was up — but now 
he breathed a deep sigh of relief. 

" I thought you were never going to stop," said he, 
simply. 

From Dick those words meant a great deal. For 
woods-walking differs as widely from ordinary walk- 
ing as trap-shooting from field-shooting. A good pe- 
destrian may tire very quickly in the forest. No two 
successive steps are of the same length ; no two succes- 
sive steps fall on the same quality of footing; no two 
successive steps are on the same level. Those three are 
the major elements of fatigue. Add further the facts 
that your way is continually obstructed both by real 
difficulties — such as trees, trunks, and rocks — and 
lesser annoyances, such as branches, bushes, and even 
spider-webs. These things all combine against endur- 
ance. The inexperienced does not know how to meet 

186 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

them with a minimum of effort. The tenderfoot is 
in a constant state of muscular and mental rigidity 
against a fall or a stumble or a cut across the face from 
some one of the infinitely numerous woods scourges. 
This rigidity speedily exhausts the vital force. 

So much for the philosophy of it. Its practical side 
might be infinitely extended. Woodsmen are tough 
and enduring and in good condition ; but no more so 
than the average college athlete. Time and again I 
have seen men of the latter class walked to a stand- 
still. I mean exactly that. They knew and were justly 
proud of their physical condition, and they hated to 
acknowledge, even to themselves, that the rest of us 
were more enduring. As a consequence, they played 
on their nerve, beyond their physical powers. When 
the collapse came, it was complete. I remember very 
well a crew of men turning out from a lumber-camp 
on the Sturgeon River to bring in on a litter a young 
fellow who had given out while attempting to follow 
Bethel Bristol through a hard day. Bristol said he 
dropped finally as though he had been struck on the 
head. The woodsman had thereupon built him a lit- 
tle fire, made him as comfortable as possible with 
both coats, and hiked for assistance. I once went 
into the woods with a prominent college athlete. We 
walked rather hard over a rough country until noon. 
Then, the athlete lay on his back for the rest of 
the day, while I finished alone the business we had 
come on. 

187 



THE FOREST 

Now, these instances do not imply that Bristol, and 
certainly not myself, were any stronger physically, or 
possessed more nervous force, than the men we had 
tired out. Either of them on a road could have trailed 
us, step for step, and as long as we pleased. But we 
knew the game. 

It comes at the last to be entirely a matter of ex- 
perience. Any man can walk in the woods all day at 
some gait. But his speed will depend on his skill. It 
is exactly like making your way through heavy, dry 
sand. As long as you restrain yourself to a certain 
leisurely plodding, you get along without extraordi- 
nary effort, while even a slight increase of speed drags 
fiercely at your feet. So it is with the woods. As 
long as you walk slowly enough so that you can pick 
your footing, and lift aside easily the branches that 
menace your face, you will expend little nervous 
energy. But the slightest pressing, the slightest incli- 
nation to go beyond what may be called your physi- 
cal foresight, lands you immediately in difficulties. 
You stumble, you break through the brush, you shut 
your eyes to avoid sharp switchings. The reservoir 
of your energy is open full cock. In about an hour 
you feel very, very tired. 

This principle holds rigidly true of every one, from 
the softest tenderfoot to the expertest forest-runner. 
For each there exists a normal rate of travel, beyond 
which are penalties. Only, the forest-runner, by long 
use, has raised the exponent of his powers. Perhaps 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

as a working hypothesis the following might be 
recommended : One good step is worth six stumbling 
steps ; go only fast enough to assure that good one. 

You will learn besides a number of things practi- 
cally which memory cannot summon to order for 
instance here. "Brush slanted across your path is 
easier lifted over your head and dropped behind you 
than pushed aside," will do as an example. 

A good woods-walker progresses without apparent 
hurry. I have followed the disappearing back of 
Tawabinisay when, as my companion elegantly ex- 
pressed it, " if you stopped to spit you got lost." 
Tawabinisay wandered through the forest, his hands 
in his pockets, humming a little Indian hymn. And 
we were breaking madly along behind him with the 
crashing of many timbers. 

Of your discoveries probably one of the most im- 
pressive will be that in the bright lexicon of woods- 
craft the word " mile " has been entirely left out. To 
count by miles is a useless and ornamental elegance 
of civilization. Some of us once worked hard all one 
day only to camp three miles downstream from our 
resting-place of the night before. And the following 
day we ran nearly sixty with the current. The 
space of measured country known as a mile may 
hold you five minutes or five hours from your des- 
tination. The Indian counts by time ; and after a 
little you will follow his example. "Four miles to 
Kettle Portage " means nothing. " Two hours to 

189 



THE FOREST 

Kettle Portage" does. Only, when an Indian tells 
you two hours you would do well to count it as 
four. 

Well, our trip practically amounted to seven days 
to nowhere; or perhaps seven days to everywhere 
would be more accurate. It was all in the high hills 
until the last day and a half, and generally in the 
hardwood forests. Twice we intersected and followed 
for short distances Indian trails, neither of which ap- 
parently had been traveled since the original party 
that had made them. They led across country for 
greater or lesser distances in the direction we wished 
to travel, and then turned aside. Three times we 
blundered on little meadows of moose-grass. Invari- 
ably these were tramped muddy like a cattle- yard, 
where the great animals had stood as lately as the 
night before. Caribou were not uncommon. There 
were a few deer, but not many, for the most of the 
deer country lies to the south of this our district. 
Partridges, as we had anticipated, lacked in such high 
country. 

In the course of the five days and a half we were 
in the hills we discovered six lakes of various sizes. 
The smallest was a mere pond. The largest would 
measure some three or four miles in diameter. We 
came upon that very late one afternoon. A brook of 
some size crossed our way, so, as was our habit, we 
promptly turned upstream to discover its source. 
In the high country the head waters are never more 

190 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

than a few miles distant ; and at the same time the 
magnitude of this indicated a lake rather than a spring 
as the supply. The lake might be Kawagama. 

Our packs had grown to be very heavy, for they 
had already the weight of nine hours piled on top. 
And the stream was exceedingly difficult to follow. 
It flowed in one of those aggravating little ravines 
whose banks are too high and steep and uneven for 
good footing, and whose beds are choked with a too 
abundant growth. In addition, there had fallen many 
trees over which one had to climb. We kept at it for 
perhaps an hour. The brook continued of the same 
size, and the country of the same character. Dick for 
the first time suggested that it might be well to camp. 

" We 've got good water here," he argued, quite 
justly, " and we can push on to-morrow just as well as 
to-night." 

We balanced our packs against a prostrate tree- 
trunk. Billy contributed his indirect share to the 
argument. 

" I lak' to have the job mak' heem this countree all 
over," he sighed. " I mak' heem more level." 

"All right," I agreed ; " you fellows sit here and rest 
a minute, and I '11 take a whirl a little ways ahead." 

I slipped my tump-line, and started on light. After 
carrying a heavy pack so long, I seemed to tread on 
air. The thicket, before so formidable, amounted to 
nothing at all. Perhaps the consciousness that the 
day's work was in reality over lent a little factitious 

191 



THE FOREST 

energy to my tired legs. At any rate, the projected 
two hundred feet of my investigations stretched to a 
good quarter-mile. At the end of that space I de- 
bouched on a widening of the ravine. The hardwood 
ran off into cedars. I pushed through the stiff rods 
and yielding fans of the latter, and all at once found 
myself leaning out over the waters of the lake. 

It was almost an exact oval, and lay in a cup of 
hills. Three wooded islands, swimming like ducks in 
the placid evening waters, added a touch of diversity. 
A huge white rock balanced the composition to the 
left, and a single white sea-gull, like a snowflake 
against pines, brooded on its top. 

I looked abroad to where the perfect reflection of 
the hills confused the shore line. I looked down 
through five feet of crystal water to where pebbles 
shimmered in refraction. I noted the low rocks jut- 
ting from the wood's shelter whereon one might stand 
to cast a fly. Then I turned and yelled and yelled 
and yelled again at the forest. 

Billy came through the brush, crashing in his 
haste. He looked long and comprehendingly. With- 
out further speech, we turned back to where Dick 
was guarding the packs. 

That youth we found profoundly indifferent. 

" Kawagama," we cried, "a quarter-mile ahead." 

He turned on us a lackluster eye. 

" You going to camp here ? " he inquired, dully. 

" Course not ! We '11 go on and camp at the lake." 
192 




" In this lovable mystery we journeyed all the rest of that morning" 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

"All right," he replied. 

We resumed our packs, a little stiffly and reluc- 
tantly, for we had tasted of woods-travel without 
them. At the lake we rested. 

"Going. to camp here?" inquired Dick. 

We looked about, but noted that the ground under 
the cedars was hummocky, and that the hardwood 
grew on a slope. Besides, we wanted to camp as near 
the shore as possible. Probably a trifle farther along 
there would be a point of high land and delightful 
little paper-birches. 

" No," we answered, cheerfully, " this is n't much 
good. Suppose we push along a ways and find some- 
thing better." 

" All right," Dick replied. 

We walked perhaps a half-mile more to the west- 
ward before we discovered what we wanted, stopping 
from time to time to discuss the merits of this or that 
place. Billy and I were feeling pretty good. After 
such a week, Kawagama was a tonic. Finally we 
agreed. 

"This 11 do," said we. 

" Thank God ! " said Dick, unexpectedly ; and 
dropped his pack to the ground with a thud, and sat 
on it. 

I looked at him closely. Then I undid my own 
pack. 

" Billy," said I, " start in on grub. Never mind the 
tent just now." 

i93 



THE FOREST 

" A' right," grinned Billy. He had been making 
his own observations. 

" Dick," said I, " let 's go down and sit on the rock 
over the water. We might fish a little." 

" All right," Dick replied. 

He stumbled dully after me to the shore. 

" Dick," I continued, " you 're a kid, and you have 
high principles, and your mother would n't like it, 
but I 'm going to prescribe for you, and I 'm going 
to insist on your following the prescription. This 
flask does not contain fly-dope ; that 's in the other 
flask. It contains whiskey. I have had it in my pack 
since we started, and it has not been opened. I don't 
believe in whiskey in the woods ; not because I am 
temperance, but because a man can't travel on it. 
But here is where you break your heaven-born prin- 
ciples. Drink." 

Dick hesitated, then he drank. By the time grub 
was ready his vitality had come to normal, and so 
he was able to digest his food and get some good out 
of it. Otherwise he could not have done so. Thus 
he furnished an admirable example of the only real 
use for whiskey in woods-travel. Also it was the 
nearest Dick ever came to being completely played 
out. 

That evening was delightful. We sat on the rock 
and watched the long North Country twilight steal up 
like a gray cloud from the east. Two loons called to 
each other, now in the shrill maniac laughter, now 

194 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

with the long, mournful cry. It needed just that one 
touch to finish the picture. We were looking, had 
we but known it, on a lake no white man had ever 
visited before. Clement alone had seen Kawagama, 
so in our ignorance we attained much the same men- 
tal attitude.. For I may as well let you into the secret ; 
this was not the fabled lake after all. We found that 
out later from Tawabinisay. But it was beautiful 
enough, and wild enough, and strange enough in its 
splendid wilderness isolation to fill the heart of the 
explorer with a great content. 

Having thus, as we thought, attained the primary 
object of our explorations, we determined on trying 
now for the second — that is, the investigation of 
the upper reaches of the River. Trout we had not 
accomplished at this lake, but the existence offish of 
some sort was attested by the presence of the two 
loons and the gull, so we laid our non-success to fish- 
erman's luck. After two false starts we managed to 
strike into a good country near enough our direction. 
The travel was much the same as before. The second 
day, however, we came to a surveyor's base-line cut 
through the woods. Then we followed that as a mat- 
ter of convenience. The base-line, cut the fall before, 
was the only evidence of man we saw in the high 
country. It meant nothing in itself, but was intended 
as a starting-point for the township surveys, when- 
ever the country should become civilized enough to 
warrant them. That condition of affairs might not 

i95 



THE FOREST 

occur for years to come. Therefore the line was cut 
out clear for a width of twenty feet. 

We continued along it as along a trail until we dis- 
covered our last lake — a body of water possessing 
many radiating arms. This was the nearest we came 
to the real Kawagama. If we had skirted the lake, 
mounted the ridge, followed a creek-bed, mounted 
another ridge, and descended a slope, we should have 
made our discovery. Later we did just that, under 
the guidance of Tawabinisay himself. Floating in 
the birch canoe we carried with us we looked back 
at the very spot on which we stood this morning. 

But we turned sharp to the left, and so missed our 
chance. However, we were in a happy frame of 
mind, for we imagined we had really made the de- 
sired discovery. 

Nothing of moment happened until we reached 
the valley of the River. Then we found we were 
treed. We had been traveling all the time among hills 
and valleys, to be sure, but on a high elevation. Even 
the bottom-lands, in which lay the lakes, were several i 
hundred feet above Superior. Now we emerged from 
the forest to find ourselves on bold mountains at least 
seven or eight hundred feet above the main valley. 
And in the main valley we could make out the 
River. 

It was rather dizzy work. Three or four times we 
ventured over the rounded crest of the hill, only to 
return after forty or fifty feet because the slope had 

196 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

become too abrupt. This grew to be monotonous 
and aggravating. It looked as though we might have 
to parallel the River's course, like scouts watching an 
army, on the top of the hill. Finally a little ravine 
gave us hope. We scrambled down it ; ended in a 
very steep slant, and finished at a sheer tangle of 
cedar-roots. The latter we attempted. Billy went on 
ahead. I let the packs down to him by means of a 
tump-line. He balanced them on roots until I had 
climbed below him. And so on. It was exactly like 
letting a bucket down a well. If one of the packs 
had slipped off the cedar-roots, it would have dropped 
like a plummet to the valley, and landed on Heaven 
knows what. The same might be said of ourselves. 
We did this because we were angry all through. 

Then we came to the end of the cedar-roots. 
Right and left offered nothing; below was a sheer, 
bare drop. Absolutely nothing remained but to climb 
back, heavy packs and all, to the top of the mountain. 
False hopes had wasted a good half day and innu- 
merable foot-pounds. Billy and I saw red. We 
bowed our heads and snaked those packs to the top 
of the mountain at a gait that ordinarily would have 
tired us out in fifty feet. Dick did not attempt to 
keep up. When we reached the top we sat down 
to wait for him. After a while he appeared, climb- 
ing leisurely. He gazed on us from behind the mask 
of his Indian imperturbability. Then he grinned. 
That did us good, for we all three laughed aloud, 

197 



THE FOREST 

and buckled down to business in a better frame of 
mind. 

That day we discovered a most beautiful waterfall. 
A stream about twenty feet in width, and with a good 
volume of water, dropped some three hundred feet or 
more into the River. It was across the valley from 
us, so we had a good view of its beauties. Our esti- 
mates of its height were carefully made on the basis 
of some standing pine that grew near its foot. 

And then we entered a steep little ravine, and de- 
scended it with misgivings to a canon, and walked 
easily down the canon to a slope that took us by 
barely sensible gradations to a wooded plain. At six 
o'clock we stood on the banks of the River, and the 
hills were behind us. 

Of our downstream travel there is little really to be 
said. We established a number of facts — that the 
River dashes most scenically from rapid to rapid, so 
that the stagnant pool theory is henceforth untenable ; 
that the hills get higher and wilder the farther you 
penetrate to the interior, and their cliffs and rock- 
precipices bolder and more naked ; that there are trout 
in the upper reaches, but not so large as in the lower 
pools ; and, above all, that travel is not a joy forever. 

For we could not ford the River above the Falls — 
it is too deep and swift. As a consequence, we had 
often to climb, often to break through the narrowest 
thicket strips, and once to feel our way cautiously 
along a sunken ledge under a sheer rock cliff. That 

198 



ON WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS 

was Billy's idea. We came to the sheer rock cliff after 
a pretty hard scramble, and we were most loth to do 
the necessary climbing. Billy suggested that we might 
be able to wade. As the pool below the cliff was black 
water and of indeterminate depth, we scouted the idea. 
Billy, however, poked around with a stick, and, as I 
have said, discovered a little ledge about a foot and 
a half wide and about two feet and a half below the 
surface. This was spectacular, but we did it. A slip 
meant a swim and the loss of the pack. We did not 
happen to slip. Shortly after we came to the Big Falls, 
and so after further painful experiment descended 
joyfully into known country. 

The freshet had gone down, the weather had 
warmed, the sun shone, we caught trout for lunch 
below the Big Falls ; everything was lovely. By three 
o'clock, after thrice wading the stream, we regained 
our canoe — now at least forty feet from the water. 
We paddled across. Deuce followed easily, where a 
week before he had been sucked down and nearly 
drowned. We opened the cache and changed our 
very travel-stained garments. We cooked ourselves 
a luxurious meal. We built a friendship-fire. And at 
last we stretched our tired bodies full length on bal- 
sam a foot thick, and gazed drowsily at the canvas- 
blurred moon before sinking to a dreamless sleep. 



199 



ON WOODS INDIANS 




XV 
ON WOODS INDIANS 

FAR in the North dwell a people practically un- 
known to any but the fur-trader and the explorer. 
Our information as to Mokis, Sioux, Cheyennes, Nez 
Perces, and indirectly many others, through the pages 
of Cooper, Parkman, and allied writers, is varied 
enough, so that our ideas of Indians are pretty well 
established. If we are romantic, we hark back to 
the past and yivent fairy-tales with ourselves anent 
the Noble Red Man who has Passed Away. If we 
are severely practical, we take notice of filth, vice, 
plug-hats, tin cans, and laziness. In fact we might 
divide all Indian concepts into two classes, follow- 
ing these mental and imaginative bents. Then we 
should have quite simply and satisfactorily the Cooper 
Indian and the Comic Paper Indian. It must be 
confessed that the latter is often approximated by 
reality — and everybody knows it. That the former 
is by no means a myth — at least in many qualities 
— the average reader might be pardoned for doubt- 
ing. 

Some time ago I desired to increase my knowledge 
203 



THE FOREST 

of the Woods Indians by whatever others had ac- 
complished. Accordingly I wrote to the Ethnolo- 
gical Department at Washington asking what had 
been done in regard to the Ojibways and Wood 
Crees north of Lake Superior. The answer was 
" nothing." 

And " nothing " is more nearly a comprehensive 
answer than at first you might believe. Visitors at 
Mackinac, Traverse, Sault Ste. Marie, and other north- 
ern resorts are besought at certain times of the year 
by silent calico-dressed squaws to purchase basket 
and bark work. If the tourist happens to follow 
these women for more wholesale examination of their 
wares, he will be led to a double-ended Mackinaw- 
built sailing-craft with red-dyed sails, half-pulled out 
on the beach. In the stern sit two or three bucks 
wearing shirts, jean trousers, and broad black hats. 
Some of the oldest men may sport a patched pair of 
moccasins or so, but most are conventional enough 
in clumsy shoes. After a longer or shorter stay they 
hoist their red sails and drift away toward some mys- 
terious destination on the north shore. If the buyer 
is curious enough and persistent enough, he may 
elicit the fact that they are Ojibways. 

Now if this same tourist happens to possess a 
mildly venturesome disposition, a sailing-craft, and a 
chart of the region, he will sooner or later blunder 
across the dwelling-place of his silent vendors. At 
the foot of some rarely frequented bay he will come 

204 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

on a diminutive village of small whitewashed log 
houses. It will differ from other villages in that the 
houses are arranged with no reference whatever to 
one another, but in the haphazard fashion of an en- 
campment. Its inhabitants are his summer friends. 
If he is of an insinuating address, he may get a 
glimpse of their daily life. Then he will go away 
firmly convinced that he knows quite a lot about 
the North Woods Indian. 

And so he does. But this North Woods Indian is 
the Reservation Indian. And in the North a Reserva- 
tion Indian is as different from a Woods Indian as 
a negro is from a Chinese. 

Suppose on the other hand your tourist is unfor- 
tunate enough to get left at some North Woods 
railway station where he has descended from the 
transcontinental to stretch his legs, and suppose him 
to have happened on a fur-town like Missinaibie at 
the precise time when the trappers are in from the 
wilds. Near the borders of the village he will come 
upon a little encampment of conical tepees. At his 
approach the women and children will disappear into 
inner darkness. A dozen wolf-like dogs will rush out 
barking. Grave-faced men will respond silently to 
his salutation. 

These men, he will be interested to observe, wear 
still the deer or moose skin moccasin — the lightest 
and easiest footgear for the woods ; bind their long 
hair with a narrow fillet, and their waists with a red 

205 



THE FOREST 

or striped worsted sash ; keep warm under the 
blanket thickness of a Hudson Bay capote ; and deck 
their clothes with a variety of barbaric ornament. 
He will see about camp weapons whose acquaintance 
he has made only in museums, peltries of whose 
identification he is by no means sure, and as matters 
of daily use — snow-shoes, bark canoes, bows and ar- 
rows — what to him have been articles of ornament 
or curiosity. To-morrow these people will be gone 
for another year, carrying with them the results of 
the week's barter. Neither he nor his kind will see 
them again, unless they too journey far into the 
Silent Places. But he has caught a glimpse of the 
stolid mask of the Woods Indian, concerning whom 
officially " nothing " is known. 

In many respects the Woods Indian is the legiti- 
mate descendant of the Cooper Indian. His life is 
led entirely in the forests ; his subsistence is assured 
by hunting, fishing, and trapping; his dwelling is 
the wigwam, and his habitation the wide reaches of 
the wilderness lying between Lake Superior and the 
Hudson Bay ; his relation to humanity confined to 
intercourse with his own people and acquaintance 
with the men who barter for his peltries. So his de- 
pendence is not on the world the white man has 
brought, but on himself and his natural environ- 
ment. Civilization has merely ornamented his an- 
cient manner. It has given him the convenience of 
cloth, of firearms, of steel traps, of iron kettles, of 

206 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

matches; it has accustomed him to the luxuries of 
white sugar, — though he had always his own maple 
product, — tea, flour, and white man's tobacco, That 
is about all. He knows nothing of whiskey. The 
towns are never visited by him, and the Hudson's 
Bay Company will sell him no liquor. His concern 
with you is not great, for he has little to gain from 
you. 

This people, then, depending on natural resources 
for subsistence, has retained to a great extent the 
qualities of the early aborigines. 

To begin with, it is distinctly nomadic. The great 
rolls of birch bark to cover the pointed tepees are 
easily transported in the bottoms of canoes, and the 
poles are quickly cut and put in place. As a con- 
sequence the Ojibway family is always on the move. 
It searches out new trapping-grounds, new fisheries, 
it pays visits, it seems even to enjoy travel for the 
sake of exploration. In winter a tepee of double 
wall is built, whose hollow is stuffed with moss to 
keep out the cold; but even that approximation of 
permanence cannot stand against the slightest con- 
venience. When an Indian kills, often he does not 
transport his game to camp, but moves his camp to 
the vicinity of the carcass. There are of these woods 
dwellers no villages, no permanent clearings. The 
vicinity of a Hudson's Bay post is sometimes occu- 
pied for a month or so during the summer, but that 

is all. 

207 



THE FOREST 

An obvious corollary of this is that tribal life does 
not consistently obtain. Throughout the summer 
months when game and fur are at their poorest the 
bands assemble, probably at the times of barter with 
the traders. Then for the short period of the idling 
season they drift together up and down the North 
Country streams, or camp for big powwows and con- 
juring near some pleasant conflux of rivers. But 
when the first frosts nip the leaves, the families sepa- 
rate to their allotted trapping-districts, there to spend 
the winter in pursuit of the real business of life. 

The tribe is thus split into many groups, ranging 
in numbers from the solitary trapper, eager to win 
enough fur to buy him a wife, to a compact little 
group of three or four families closely related in blood. 
The most striking consequence is that, unlike other 
Indian bodies politic, there are no regularly consti- 
tuted and acknowledged chiefs. Certain individuals 
gain a remarkable reputation and an equally remark- 
able respect for wisdom, or hunting skill, or power 
of woodcraft, or travel. These men are the so-called 
" old-men " often mentioned in Indian manifestoes, 
though age has nothing to do with the deference ac- 
corded them. Tawabinisay is not more than thirty- 
five years old ; Peter, our Hudson Bay Indian, is 
hardly more than a boy. Yet both are obeyed im- 
plicitly by whomever they happen to be with ; both 
lead the way by river or trail ; and both, where ques- 
tion arises, are sought in advice by men old enough 

208 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

to be their fathers. Perhaps this is as good a demo- 
cracy as another. 

The life so briefly hinted at in the foregoing lines, 
inevitably develops and fosters an expertness of wood- 
craft almost beyond belief. The Ojibway knows his 
environment. The forest is to him so familiar in 
each and every one of its numerous and subtle as- 
pects that the slightest departure from the normal 
strikes his attention at once. A patch of brown 
shadow where green shadow should fall, a shimmer- 
ing of leaves where should be merely a gentle wav- 
ing, a cross-light where the usual forest growth should 
adumbrate, a flash of wings at a time of day when 
feathered creatures ordinarily rest quiet, — these, and 
hundreds of others which you and I should never 
even guess at, force themselves as glaringly on an In- 
dian's notice as a brass band in a city street. A white 
man looks for game; an Indian sees it because it 
differs from the forest. 

That is, of course, a matter of long experience 
and lifetime habit. Were it a question merely of 
this, the white man might also in time attain the same 
skill. But the Indian is a better animal. His senses 
are appreciably sharper than our own. 

In journeying down the Kapuskasing River, our 
Indians — who had come from the woods to guide us 
— always saw game long before we did. They would 
never point it out to us. The bow of the canoe 
would swing silently in its direction, there to rest 

209 



THE FOREST 

motionless until we indicated we had seen some- 
thing. 

" Where is it, Peter ? " I would whisper. 

But Peter always remained contemptuously si- 
lent. 

One evening we paddled directly into the eye of 
the setting sun across a shallow little lake filled with 
hardly sunken boulders. There was no current, and 
no breath of wind to stir the water into betraying 
riffles. But invariably those Indians twisted the canoe 
into a new course ten feet before we reached one of 
the obstructions, whose existence our dazzled vision 
could not attest until they were actually below us. 
They saw those rocks, through the shimmer of the 
surface glare. 

Another time I discovered a small black animal 
lying flat on a point of shale. Its head was concealed 
behind a boulder, and it was so far away that I was 
inclined to congratulate myself on having differen- 
tiated it from the shadow. 

" What is it, Peter ? " I asked. 

Peter hardly glanced at it. 

" Ninny-moosh " (dog), he replied. 

Now we were a hundred miles south of the Hud- 
son's Bay post and two weeks north of any other 
settlement. Saving a horse, a dog would be about the 
last thing to occur to one in guessing at the identity 
of any strange animal. This looked like a little 
black blotch, without form. Yet Peter knew it. It 

2IO 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

was a dog, lost from some Indian hunting-party, and 
mightily glad to see us. 

The sense of smell too is developed to an extent 
positively uncanny to us who have needed it so little. 
Your Woods Indian is always sniffing, always test- 
ing the impressions of other senses by his olfactories. 
Instances numerous and varied might be cited, but 
probably one will do as well as a dozen. It once 
became desirable to kill a caribou in country where 
the animals are not at all abundant. Tawabinisay 
volunteered to take Jim within shot of one. Jim 
describes their hunt as the most wonderful bit of 
stalking he had ever seen. The Indian followed the 
animal's tracks as easily as you or I could have fol- 
lowed them over snow. He did this rapidly and 
certainly. Every once in a while he would get down 
on all fours to sniff inquiringly at the crushed herb- 
age. Always on rising to his feet he would give the 
result of his investigations. 

" Ah-teek (caribou) one hour." 

And later, " Ah-teek half hour." 

Or again, " Ah-teek quarter hour." 

And finally, "Ah-teek over nex' hill." 

And it was so. 

In like manner, but most remarkable to us be- 
cause the test of direct comparison with our own 
sense was permitted us, was their acuteness of hear- 
ing. Often while "jumping" a roaring rapids in 
two canoes, my companion and I have heard our 

211 



THE FOREST 

men talking to each other in quite an ordinary tone 
of voice. That is to say, I could hear my Indian, 
and Jim could hear his ; but personally we were forced 
to shout loudly to carry across the noise of the 
stream. The distant approach of animals they an- 
nounce accurately. 

" Wawashkeshi (deer)," says Peter. 

And sure enough, after an interval, we too could 
distinguish the footfalls on the dry leaves. 

As both cause and consequence of these physical 
endowments — which place them nearly on a parity 
with the game itself — they are most expert hunters. 
Every sportsman knows the importance — and also 
the difficulty — of discovering game before it dis- 
covers him. The Indian has here an immense ad- 
vantage. And after game is discovered, he is further- 
more most expert in approaching it with all the 
refined art of the still hunter. 

Mr. Caspar Whitney describes in exasperation his 
experience with the Indians of the Far Northwest. 
He complains that when they blunder on game, they 
drop everything and enter into almost hopeless chase, 
two legs against four. Occasionally the quarry be- 
comes enough bewildered so that the wild shooting 
will bring it down. He quite justly argues that the 
merest pretense at caution in approach would result 
in much greater success. 

The Woods Indian is no such fool. He is a 
mighty poor shot — and he knows it. Personally I 

212 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

believe he shuts both eyes before pulling trigger. He 
is armed with a long flint or percussion lock musket, 
whose gas-pipe barrel is bound to the wood that 
runs its entire length by means of brass bands, and 
whose effective range must be about ten yards. This 
archaic implement is known as a " trade gun," and 
has the single merit of never getting out of order. 
Furthermore ammunition is precious. In conse- 
quence the wilderness hunter is not going to be merely 
pretty sure ; he intends to be absolutely certain. If 
he cannot approach near enough to blow a hole in 
his prey, he does not fire. 

I have seen Peter drop into marsh-grass so thin that 
apparently we could discern the surface of the ground 
through it, and disappear so completely that our most 
earnest attention could not distinguish even a rustling 
of the herbage. After an interval his gun would go 
off from some distant point, exactly where some ducks 
had been feeding serenely oblivious to fate. Neither 
of us white men would have considered for a moment 
the possibility of getting any of them. Once I felt 
rather proud of myself for killing six ruffed grouse 
out of some trees with the pistol, until Peter drifted 
in carrying three he had bagged with a stick. 

Another interesting phase of this almost perfect 
correspondence to environment is the readiness with 
which an Indian will meet an emergency. We are 
accustomed to rely first of all on the skilled labor of 
some one we can hire ; second, if we undertake the 

213 



THE FOREST 

job ourselves, on the tools made for us by skilled 
labor ; and third, on the shops to supply us with the 
materials we may need. Not once in a lifetime are 
we thrown entirely on our own resources. Then we 
improvise bunglingly a makeshift. 

The Woods Indian possesses his knife and his 
light axe. Nails, planes, glue, chisels, vises, cord, 
rope, and all the rest of it he has to do without. But 
he never improvises makeshifts. No matter what 
the exigency or how complicated the demand, his 
experience answers with accuracy. Utensils and 
tools he knows exactly where to find. His job is 
neat and workmanlike, whether it is a bark receptacle, 
— water-tight or not, — a pair of snow-shoes, the re- 
pairing of a badly smashed canoe, the construction 
of a shelter, or the fashioning of a paddle. About 
noon one day Tawabinisay broke his axe-helve square 
off. This to us would have been a serious affair. 
Probably we should, left to ourselves, have stuck in 
some sort of a rough straight sapling handle which 
would have answered well enough until we could 
have bought another. By the time we had cooked 
dinner that Indian had fashioned another helve. We 
compared it with the store article. It was as well 
shaped, as smooth, as nicely balanced. In fact as we 
laid the new and the old side by side, we could not 
have selected, from any evidence of the workmanship, 
which had been made by machine and which by 
hand. Tawabinisay then burned out the wood from 

214 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

the axe, retempered the steel, set the new helve, and 
wedged it neatly with ironwood wedges. The whole 
affair, including the cutting of the timber, consumed 
perhaps half an hour. 

To travel with a Woods Indian is a constant source 
of delight on this account. So many little things 
that the white man does without because he will not 
bother with their transportation, the Indian makes 
for himself. And so quickly and easily ! I have seen 
a thoroughly waterproof, commodious, and comfort- 
able bark shelter made in about the time it would 
take one to pitch a tent. I have seen a raft built of 
cedar logs and cedar-bark ropes in an hour. I have 
seen a badly stove canoe made as good as new in 
fifteen minutes. The Indian rarely needs to hunt for 
the materials he requires. He knows exactly where 
they grow, and he turns as directly to them as a clerk 
would turn to his shelves. No problem of the living 
of physical life is too obscure to have escaped his 
varied experience. You may travel with Indians for 
years, and learn something new and delightful as to 
how to take care of yourself every summer. 

The qualities I have mentioned come primarily 
from the fact that the Woods Indian is a hunter. I 
have now to instance two whose development can be 
traced to the other fact, — that he is a nomad. I refer 
to his skill with the bark canoe and his ability to 
carry. 

I was once introduced to a man at a little way 
215 



THE FOREST 

station of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the follow- 
ing words : — 

" Shake hands with Munson ; he 's as good a canoe- 
man as an Indian." 

A little later one of the bystanders remarked to 
me : — 

" That fellow you was just talking with is as good 
a canoeman as an Injin." 

Still later, at an entirely different place, a mem- 
ber of the bar informed me, in the course of discus- 
sion : — 

" The only man I know of who can do it is 
named Munson. He is as good a canoeman as an 
Indian." 

At the time this unanimity of praise puzzled me 
a little. I thought I had seen some pretty good canoe 
work, and even cherished a mild conceit that oc- 
casionally I could keep right side up myself. I knew 
Munson to be a great woods-traveler, with many 
striking qualities, and why this of canoemanship 
should be so insistently chosen above the others was 
beyond my comprehension. Subsequently a com- 
panion and I journeyed to Hudson Bay with two 
birch canoes and two Indians. Since that trip I have 
had a vast respect for Munson. 

Undoubtedly among the half-breed and white 
guides of lower Canada, Maine, and the Adiron- 
dacks are many skillful men. But they know their 
waters; they follow a beaten track. The Woods 

216 




" The Indians would rise to their feet for a single moment ' 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

Indian — well, let me tell you something of what he 
does. 

We went down the Kapuskasing River to the 
Mattagami, and then down that to the Moose. 
These rivers are at first but a hundred feet or so 
wide, but rapidly swell with the influx of number- 
less smaller streams. Two days' journey brings you 
to a watercourse nearly half a mile in breadth; two 
weeks finds you on a surface approximately a mile 
and a half across. All this water descends from the 
Height of Land to the sea level. It does so through 
a rock country. The result is a series of roaring, 
dashing boulder rapids and waterfalls that would 
make your hair stand on end merely to contemplate 
from the banks. 

The regular route to Moose Factory is by the 
Missinaibie. Our way was new and strange. No 
trails ; no knowledge of the country. When we 
came to a stretch of white water, the Indians would 
rise to their feet for a single instant's searching ex- 
amination of the stretch of tumbled water before 
them. In that moment they picked the passage 
they were to follow as well as a white man could 
have done so in half an hour's study. Then with- 
out hesitation they shot their little craft at the green 
water. 

From that time we merely tried to sit still, each 
in his canoe. Each Indian did it all with his sin- 
gle paddle. He seemed to possess absolute control 

217 



THE FOREST 

over his craft. Even in the rush of water which 
seemed to hurry us on at almost railroad speed, he 
could stop for an instant, work directly sideways, 
shoot forward at a slant, swing either his bow or his 
stern. An error in judgment or in the instantaneous 
acting upon it meant a hit ; and a hit in these savage 
North Country rivers meant destruction. How my 
man kept in his mind the passage he had planned 
during his momentary inspection was always to me 
a miracle. How he got so unruly a beast as the 
birch canoe to follow it in that tearing volume of 
water was always another. Big boulders he dodged, 
eddies he took advantage of, slants of current he 
utilized. A fractional second of hesitation could not 
be permitted him. But always the clutching of 
white hands from t le rip at the eddy finally con- 
veyed to my spray-drenched faculties that the rapid 
was safely astern. And this, mind you, in strange 
waters. 

Occasionally we would carry our outfit through 
the woods, while the Indians would shoot some 
especially bad water in the light canoe. As a spec- 
tacle nothing could be finer. The flash of the yel- 
low bark, the movement of the broken waters, the 
gleam of the paddle, the tense alertness of the men's 
figures, their carven, passive faces, with the contrast 
of the flashing eyes and the distended nostrils, then 
the leap into space over some half-cataract, the smash 
of spray, the exultant yells of the canoemen ! For 

218 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

your Indian enjoys the game thoroughly. And it 
requires very bad water indeed to make him take to 
the brush. 

This is of course the spectacular. But also in the 
ordinary gray business of canoe travel the Woods 
Indian shows his superiority. He is tireless, and 
composed as to wrist and shoulder of a number of 
whalebone springs. From early dawn to dewy eve, 
and then a few gratuitous hours into the night, he 
will dig energetic holes in the water with his long 
narrow blade. And every stroke counts. The water 
boils out in a splotch of white air-bubbles, the little 
suction holes pirouette like dancing girls, the fabric 
of the craft itself trembles under the power of the 
stroke. Jim and I used, in the lake stretches, to 
amuse ourselves — and probably the Indians — by 
paddling in furious rivalry one against the other. 
Then Peter would make up his mind he would like 
to speak to Jacob. His canoe would shoot up along- 
side as though the Old Man of the Lake had laid 
his hand across its stern. Would I could catch that 
trick of easy, tireless speed. I know it lies some- 
what in keeping both elbows always straight and 
stiff, in a lurch forward of the shoulders at the end 
of the stroke. But that, and more ! Perhaps one 
needs a copper skin and beady black eyes with sur- 
face lights. 

Nor need you hope to pole a canoe upstream as 
do these people. Tawabinisay uses two short poles, 

219 



THE FOREST 

one in either hand, kneels amidships, and snakes 
that little old canoe of his upstream so fast that you 
would swear the rapids an easy matter — until you 
tried them yourself. We were once trailed up a 
river by an old Woods Indian and his interesting 
family. The outfit consisted of canoe Number One 
— item, one old Injin, one boy of eight years, one 
dog ; canoe Number Two — item, one old Injin 
squaw, one girl of eighteen or twenty, one dog ; 
canoe Number Three — item, two little girls of ten 
and twelve, one dog. We tried desperately for 
three days to get away from this party. It did not 
seem to work hard at all. We did. Even the two 
little girls appeared to dip the contemplative paddle 
from time to time. Water boiled back of our own 
blades. We started early and quit late, and about 
as we congratulated ourselves over our evening fire 
that we had distanced our followers at last, those 
three canoes would steal silently and calmly about 
the lower bend to draw ashore below us. In ten 
minutes the old Indian was delivering an oration to 
us, squatted in resignation. 

The Red Gods alone know what he talked about. 
He had no English, and our Ojibway was of the 
strictly utilitarian. But for an hour he would hold 
forth. We called him Talk-in-the-Face, the Great 
Indian Chief. Then he would drop a mild hint for 
saymon, which means tobacco, and depart. By ten 
o'clock the next morning he and his people would 

220 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

overtake us in spite of our earlier start. Usually we 
were in the act of dragging our canoe through an 
especially vicious rapid by means of a tow-line. Their 
three canoes, even to the children's, would ascend 
easily by means of poles. Tow-lines appeared to be 
unsportsmanlike — like angle-worms. Then the en- 
tire nine — including the dogs — would roost on 
rocks and watch critically our methods. 

The incident had one value, however ; it showed 
us just why these people possess the marvelous canoe 
skill I have attempted to sketch. The little boy in 
the leading canoe was not over eight or nine years 
of age, but he had his little paddle and his little canoe- 
pole, and what is more, he already used them intel- 
ligently and well. As for the little girls, — well, they 
did easily feats I never hope to emulate, and that 
without removing the cowl-like coverings from their 
heads and shoulders. 

The same early habitude probably accounts for 
their ability to carry weights long distances. The 
Woods Indian is not a mighty man physically. 
Most of them are straight and well built, but of 
only medium height, and not wonderfully muscled. 
Peter was most beautiful, but in the fashion of the 
flying Mercury, with long smooth panther muscles. 
He looked like Uncas, especially when his keen 
hawk-face was fixed in distant attention. But I think 
I could have wrestled Peter down. Yet time and 
again I have seen that Indian carry two hundred 

221 



THE FOREST 

pounds for some miles through a rough country 
absolutely without trails. And once I was witness 
of a feat of Tawabinisay when that wily savage por- 
taged a pack of fifty pounds and a two-man canoe 
through a hill country for four hours and ten minutes 
without a rest. Tawabinisay is even smaller than 
Peter. 

So much for the qualities developed by the woods- 
life. Let us now examine what may be described as 
the inherent characteristics of the people. 



222 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

(continued) 




XVI 
ON WOODS INDIANS (continued) 

IT must be understood, of course, that I offer you 
only the best of my subject. A people counts 
for what it does well. Also I instance men of stand- 
ing in the loose Indian body politic. A traveler can 
easily discover the reverse of the medal. These have 
their shirks, their do-nothings, their men of small ac- 
count, just as do other races. I have no thought of 
glorifying the noble red man, nor of claiming for him 
a freedom from human imperfection — even where his 
natural quality and training count the most — greater 
than enlightenment has been able to reach. 

In my experience the honesty of the Woods In- 
dian is of a very high order. The sense of mine and 
thine is strongly forced by the exigencies of the North 
Woods life. A man is always on the move, he is al- 
ways exploring the unknown countries. Manifestly 
it is impossible for him to transport the entire sum 
of his worldly effects. The implements of winter are 
a burden in summer. Also the return journey from 
distant shores must be provided for by food-stations, 
to be relied on. The solution of these needs is the 
cache. 

225 



THE FOREST 

And the cache is not a literal term at all. It con- 
ceals nothing. Rather does it hold aloft in long-legged 
prominence, for the inspection of all who pass, what 
the owner has seen fit to leave behind. A heavy- 
platform high enough from the ground to frustrate 
the investigations of animals is all that is required. 
Visual concealment is unnecessary because in the 
North Country a cache is sacred. On it may depend 
the life of a man. He who leaves provisions must 
find them on his return, for he may reach them starv- 
ing, and the length of his out-journey may depend on 
his certainty of relief at this point on his in-journey. 
So men passing touch not his hoard, for some day 
they may be in the same fix, and a precedent is a 
bad thing. 

Thus in parts of the wildest countries of northern 
Canada I have unexpectedly come upon a birch canoe 
in capsized suspension between two trees ; or a whole 
bunch of snow-shoes depending fruit-like beneath 
the fans of a spruce ; or a tangle of steel traps thrust 
into the crevice of a tree-root ; or a supply of pork 
and flour, swathed like an Egyptian mummy, occu- 
pying stately a high bier. These things we have 
passed by reverently, as symbols of a people's trust 
in its kind. 

The same sort of honesty holds in regard to smaller 
things. I have never hesitated to leave in my camp 
firearms, fishing-rods, utensils valuable from a woods 
point of view, even a watch or money. Not only 

226 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

have I never lost anything in that manner, but once 
an Indian lad followed me some miles after the 
morning's start to restore to me a half dozen trout 
flies I had accidentally left behind. 

It might be readily inferred that this quality car- 
ries over into the subtleties, as indeed is the case. 
Mr. MacDonald of Brunswick House once discussed 
with me the system of credits carried on by the Hud- 
son's Bay Company with the trappers. Each family 
is advanced goods to the value of two hundred dol- 
lars, with the understanding that the debt is to be 
paid from the season's catch. 

" I should think you would lose a good deal," I 
ventured. " Nothing could be easier than for an In- 
dian to take his two hundred dollars' worth and disap- 
pear in the woods. You'd never be able to find 
him." 

Mr. MacDonald's reply struck me, for the man 
had twenty years' trading experience. 

" I have never," said he, " in a long woods-life 
known but one Indian liar." 

This my own limited woods-wandering has proved 
to be true to a sometimes almost ridiculous extent. 
The most trivial statement of fact can be relied on, 
provided it is given outside of trade or enmity or 
absolute indifference. The Indian loves to fool the 
tenderfoot. But a sober measured statement you can 
conclude is accurate. And if an Indian promises a 
thing, he will accomplish it. He expects you to do 

227 



THE FOREST 

the same. Watch your lightest words carefully an 
you would retain the respect of your red associates. 

On our way to the Hudson Bay we rashly asked 
Peter, towards the last, when we should reach Moose 
Factory. He deliberated. 

" T'ursday," said he. 

Things went wrong; Thursday supplied a head 
wind. We had absolutely no interest in reaching 
Moose Factory next day ; the next week would have 
done as well. But Peter, deaf to expostulation, en- 
treaty, and command, kept us traveling from six in 
the morning until after twelve at night. We could n't 
get him to stop. Finally he drew the canoes ashore. 

" Moose-amik quarter hour," said he. 

He had kept his word. 

The Ojibway possesses a great pride which the un- 
thinking can ruffle quite unconsciously in many 
ways. Consequently the Woods Indian is variously 
described as a good guide or a bad one. The differ- 
ence lies in whether you suggest or command. 

" Peter, you 've got to make Chicawgun to-night. 
Get a move on you ! " will bring you sullen service, 
and probably breed kicks on the grub supply, which 
is the immediate precursor of mutiny. 

" Peter, it 's a long way to Chicawgun. Do you 
think we make him to-night ? " on the other hand, 
will earn you at least a serious consideration of the 
question. And if Peter says you can, you will. 

For the proper man the Ojibway takes a great 
228 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

pride in his woodcraft, the neatness of his camps, the 
savory quality of his cookery, the expedition of his 
travel, the size of his packs, the patience of his en- 
durance. On the other hand he can be as sullen, in- 
efficient, stupid, and vindictive as any man of any 
race on earth. I suppose the faculty of getting along 
with men is largely inherent. Certainly it is blended 
of many subtleties. To be friendly, to retain respect, 
to praise, to preserve authority, to direct and yet to 
leave detail, to exact what is due, and yet to deserve 
it — these be the qualities of a leader and cannot be 
taught. 

In general the Woods Indian is sober. He cannot 
get whiskey regularly, to be sure, but I have often 
seen the better class of Ojibways refuse a drink, say- 
ing that they did not care for it. He starves well, 
and keeps going on nothing long after hope is van- 
ished. He is patient, yea, very patient, under toil, and 
so accomplishes great journeys, overcomes great diffi- 
culties, and does great deeds by means of this hand- 
maiden of genius. According to his own standards 
is he clean. To be sure his baths are not numer- 
ous, nor his laundry-days many, but he never cooks 
until he has washed his hands and arms to the very 
shoulders. Other details would but corroborate the 
impression of this instance, — that his ideas differ 
from ours, as is his right, but that he lives up to his 
ideas. Also is he hospitable, expecting nothing in re- 
turn. After your canoe is afloat and your paddle in 

229 



THE FOREST 

the river, two or three of his youngsters will splash 
in after you to toss silver fish to your necessities. 
And so always he will wait until this last moment of 
departure in order that you will not feel called on to 
give him something in return. Which is true tact 
and kindliness, and worthy of high praise. 

Perhaps I have not strongly enough insisted that 
the Indian nations differ as widely from one another 
as do unallied races. We found this to be true even 
in the comparatively brief journey from Chapleau to 
Moose. After pushing through a trackless wilder- 
ness without having laid eyes on a human being, 
excepting the single instance of three French voy- 
ageurs going heaven knows where, we were antici- 
pating pleasurably our encounter with the traders at 
the Factory, and naturally supposed that Peter and 
Jacob would be equally pleased at the chance of 
visiting with their own kind. Not at all. When 
we reached Moose, our Ojibways wrapped them- 
selves in a mantle of dignity, and stalked scornful 
amidst obsequious clans. For the Ojibway is great 
among Indians, verily much greater than the Moose 
River Crees. Had it been a question of Rupert's 
River Crees with their fierce blood-laws, their con- 
juring-lodges, and their pagan customs, the affair 
might have been different. 

For, mark you, the Moose River Cree is little 
among hunters, and he conducts the chase miscel- 
laneously over his district without thought to the 

230 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

preservation of the beaver, and he works in the hay 
marshes during the summer, and is short, squab, 
and dirty, and generally ka-win-ni-shi-shin. The old 
sacred tribal laws, which are better than a religion 
because they are practically adapted to northern 
life, have among them been allowed to lapse. Trav- 
elers they are none, nor do their trappers get far 
from the Company's pork-barrels. So they inbreed 
ignobly for lack of outside favor, and are dying 
from the face of the land through dire diseases, just 
as their reputations have already died from men's 
respect. 

The great unwritten law of the forest is that, save 
as provision during legitimate travel, one may not 
hunt in his neighbor's district. Each trapper has 
assigned him, or gets by inheritance or purchase, 
certain territorial power. In his land he alone may 
trap. He knows the beaver-dams, how many ani- 
mals each harbors, how large a catch each will stand 
without diminution of the supply. So the fur is 
made to last. In the southern district this division 
is tacitly agreed upon. It is not etiquette to poach. 
What would happen to a poacher no one knows, 
simply because the necessity for finding out has not 
arisen. Tawabinisay controls from Batchawanung 
to Agawa. There old Waboos takes charge. And 
so on. But in the Far North the control is more 
often disputed, and there the blood-law still holds. 
An illegal trapper baits his snares with his life. If 

231 



THE FOREST 

discovered, he is summarily shot. So is the game 
preserved. 

The Woods Indian never kills wastefully. The 
mere presence of game does not breed in him a lust 
to slaughter something. Moderation you learn of 
him first of all. Later, provided you are with him 
long enough and your mind is open to mystic in- 
fluence, you will feel the strong impress of his idea 
— that the animals of the forest are not lower than 
man, but only different. Man is an animal living 
the life of the forest ; the beasts are also a body poli- 
tic speaking a different language and with different 
view-points. Amik, the beaver, has certain ideas as 
to the conduct of life, certain habits of body, and 
certain bias of thought. His scheme of things is 
totally at variance with that held by Me-en-gan, the 
wolf, but even to us whites the two are on a parity. 
Man has still another system. One is no better than 
another. They are merely different. And just as 
Me-en-gan preys on Amik, so does Man kill for his 
own uses. 

Thence are curious customs. A Rupert River 
Cree will not kill a bear unless he, the hunter, is in 
gala attire, and then not until he has made a short 
speech in which he assures his victim that the affair 
is not one of personal enmity, but of expedience, 
and that anyway he, the bear, will be better off in 
the Hereafter. And then the skull is cleaned and set 
on a pole near running water, there to remain during 

232 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

twelve moons. Also at the tail-root of a newly de- 
ceased beaver is tied a thong braided of red wool 
and deerskin. And many other curious habitudes 
which would be of slight interest here. Likewise 
do they conjure up by means of racket and fasting 
the familiar spirits of distant friends or enemies, and 
on these spirits fasten a blessing or a curse. 

From this it may be deduced that missionary work 
has not been as thorough as might be hoped. That is 
true. The Woods Indian loves to sing, and pos- 
sesses quaint melodies, or rather intonations, of his 
own. But especially does he delight in the long- 
drawn wail of some of our old-fashioned hymns. The 
church oftenest reaches him through them. I know 
nothing stranger than the sight of a little half-lit 
church filled with Indians swaying unctuously to 
and fro in the rhythm of a cadence old Watts would 
have recognized with difficulty. The religious feel- 
ing of the performance is not remarkable, but per- 
haps it does as a starting-point. 

Exactly how valuable the average missionary work 
is, I have been puzzled to decide. Perhaps the church 
needs more intelligence in the men it sends out. The 
evangelist is usually filled with narrow preconceived 
notions as to the proper physical life. He squeezes 
his savage into log houses, boiled shirts, and boots. 
When he has succeeded in getting his tuberculosis 
crop well started, he offers as compensation a doc- 
trinal religion admirably adapted to us, who have 

2 33 



THE FOREST 

within reach of century-trained perceptions a thou- 
sand of the subtler associations a savage can know no- 
thing about. If there is enough glitter and tin steeple 
and high-sounding office and gilt good-behavior card 
to it, the red man's pagan heart is tickled in its 
vanity, and he dies in the odor of sanctity — and of 
a filth his out-of-door life has never taught him how 
to avoid. The Indian is like a raccoon : in his proper 
surroundings he is clean morally and physically 
because he knows how to be so ; but in a cage he is 
filthy because he does not know how to be other- 
wise. 

I must not be understood as condemning mission- 
ary work ; only the stupid missionary work one most 
often sees in the North. Surely Christianity should 
be adaptable enough in its little things to fit any 
people with its great. It seems hard for some men 
to believe that it is not essential for a real Christian to 
wear a plug-hat. One God, love, kindness, charity, 
honesty, right living, may thrive as well in the wig- 
wam as in a four-square house, — provided you let 
them wear moccasins and a capote wherewith to keep 
themselves warm and vital. 

Tawabinisay must have had his religious training 
at the hands of a good man. He had lost none of 
his aboriginal virtue and skill, as may be gathered 
from what I have before said of him, and had gained 
in addition certain of the gentle qualities. I have 
never been able to gauge exactly the extent of his 

234 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

religious understanding, for Tawabinisay is a silent 
individual and possesses very little English, but I do 
know that his religious feeling was deep and reverent. 
He never swore in English; he did not drink; he 
never traveled or hunted or fished on Sunday when 
he could possibly help it. These virtues he wore 
modestly and unassumingly as an accustomed gar- 
ment. Yet he was the most gloriously natural man 
I have ever met. 

The main reliance of his formalism when he was 
off in the woods seemed to be a little tattered vol- 
ume, which he perused diligently all Sunday, and 
wrapped carefully in a strip of oiled paper during 
the rest of the week. One day I had a chance to 
look at this book while its owner was away after 
spring water. Every alternate page was in the pho- 
netic Indian symbols, of which more hereafter. The 
rest was in French, and evidently a translation. Al- 
though the volume was of Roman Catholic origin, 
creed was conspicuously subordinated to the needs 
of the class it aimed to reach. A confession of faith, 
quite simple, in One God, a Saviour, a Mother of 
Heaven ; a number of Biblical extracts rich in im- 
agery and applicability to the experience of a woods- 
dweller; a dozen simple prayers of the kind the 
natural man would oftenest find occasion to express 
— a prayer for sickness, for bounty, for fair weather, 
for ease of travel, for the smiling face of Providence ; 
and then some hymns. To me the selection seemed 

23s 



THE FOREST 

most judicious. It answered the needs of Tawabini- 
say's habitual experiences, and so the red man was a 
good and consistent convert. Irresistibly I was led 
to contemplate the idea of any one trying to get 
Tawabinisay to live in a house, to cut cordwood with 
an axe, to roost on a hard bench under a tin steeple, 
to wear stiff shoes, and to quit forest roamings. 

The written language mentioned above, you will 
see often in the Northland. Whenever an Indian 
band camps, it blazes a tree and leaves, as record for 
those who may follow, a message written in the pho- 

C <( — * p 

netic character. I do not understand exactly the 
philosophy of it, but I gather that each sound has a 
symbol of its own, like shorthand, and that therefore 
even totally different languages, such as Ojibway, the 
Wood Cree, or the Hudson Bay Esquimaux, may 
all be written in the same character. It was invented 
nearly a hundred years ago by a priest. So simple 
is it, and so needed a method of intercommunication, 
that its use is now practically universal. Even the 
youngsters understand it, for they are early instructed 

236 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

in its mysteries during the long winter evenings. 
On the preceding page is a message I copied from 
a spruce-tree two hundred miles from anywhere on 
the Mattagami River. 

Besides this are numberless formal symbols in con- 
stant use. Forerunners on a trail stick a twig in the 
ground whose point indicates exactly the position of 
the sun. Those who follow are able to estimate, by 
noting how far beyond the spot the twig points to 
the sun has traveled, how long a period of time has 
elapsed. A stick pointed in any given direction tells 





A short journey. A medium journey. A long journey 

the route, of course. Another planted upright across 
the first shows by its position how long a journey is 
contemplated. A little sack suspended at the end of 
the pointer conveys information as to the state of the 
larder, lean or fat according as the little sack contains 
more or less gravel or sand. A shred of rabbit-skin 
means starvation. And so on in variety useless in any 
but an ethnological work. 

The Ojib ways' tongue is soft, and full of decided 
lisping and sustained hissing sounds. It is spoken 
with somewhat of a sing-song drawl. We always 
had a fancy that somehow it was of forest growth, 
and that its syllables were intended in the scheme of 

237 



THE FOREST 

things to blend with the woods-noises, just as the 
feathers of the mother partridge blend with the 
woods-colors. In general it is polysyllabic. That 
applies especially to concepts borrowed of the white 
men. On the other hand, the Ojibways describe in 
monosyllables many ideas we could express only in 
phrase. They have a single word for the notion, 
Place-where-an-animal-slept-last-night. Our " lair," 
" form," etc., do not mean exactly that. Its genius, 
moreover, inclines to a flexible verb-form, by which 
adjectives and substantives are often absorbed into 
the verb itself, so that one beautiful singing word will 
convey a whole paragraph of information. My little 
knowledge of it is so entirely empirical that it can 
possess small value. 

In concluding these desultory remarks, I want to 
tell you of a very curious survival among the Ojib- 
ways and Ottawas of the Georgian Bay. It seems 
that some hundreds of years ago these ordinarily 
peaceful folk descended on the Iroquois in what is 
now New York and massacred a village or so. Then, 
like small boys who have thrown only too accurately 
at the delivery wagon, they scuttled back home again. 
Since that time they have lived in deadly fear of 
retribution. The Iroquois have long since disap- 
peared from the face of the earth, but even to-day 
the Georgian Bay Indians are subject to periodical 
spasms of terror. Some wild-eyed and imaginative 
youth sees at sunset a canoe far down the horizon. 

238 



ON WOODS INDIANS 

Immediately the villages are abandoned in haste, 
and the entire community moves up to the head 
waters of streams, there to lurk until convinced that 
all danger is past. It does no good to tell these 
benighted savages that they are safe from vengeance, 
at least in this world. The dreaded name of Iroquois 
is potent, even across the centuries. 



239 



THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 



4 
/ 




XVII 
THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 

WE settled down peacefully on the River, and 
the weather, after so much enmity, was kind 
to us. Likewise did the flies disappear from the 
woods utterly. 

Each morning we arose as the Red Gods willed; 
generally early, when the sun was just gilding the 
peaks to the westward ; but not too early, before the 
white veil had left the River. Billy, with woods- 
man's contempt for economy, hewed great logs and 
burned them nobly in the cooking of trout, oatmeal, 
pancakes, and the like. We had constructed our- 
selves tables and benches between green trees, and 
there we ate. And great was the eating beyond the 
official capacity of the human stomach. There offered 
little things to do, delicious little things just on the 
hither side of idleness. A rod wrapping needed more 
waxed silk ; a favorite fly required attention to pre- 
vent dissolution ; the pistol was to be cleaned ; a flag- 
pole seemed desirable ; a trifle more of balsam could 
do no harm; clothes might stand drying, blankets 
airing. We accomplished these things leisurely, paus- 
ing for the telling of stories, for the puffing of pipes, 

243 



THE FOREST 

for the sheer joy of contemplations. Deerskin slipper 
moccasins and flapping trousers attested our desha- 
bille. And then somehow it was noon, and Billy 
again at the Dutch oven and the broiler. 

Trout we ate, and always more trout. Big fellows 
broiled with strips of bacon craftily sewn in and out 
of the pink flesh ; medium fellows cut into steaks ; 
little fellows fried crisp in corn-meal; big, medium, 
and little fellows mingled in component of the famous 
North Country bouillon, whose other ingredients are 
partridges, and tomatoes, and potatoes, and onions, 
and salt pork, and flour in combination delicious 
beyond belief. Nor ever did we tire of them, three 
times a day, printed statement to the contrary not- 
withstanding. And besides were many crafty dishes 
over whose construction the major portion of morn- 
ing idleness was spent. 

Now at two o'clock we groaned temporary little 
groans ; and crawled shrinking into our river clothes, 
which we dared not hang too near the fire for fear of 
the disintegrating scorch, and drew on soggy hob- 
nailed shoes with holes cut in the bottom, and 
plunged with howls of disgust into the upper rif- 
fles. Then the cautious leg-straddled passage of the 
swift current, during which we forgot forever — which 
eternity alone circles the bliss of an afternoon on the 
River — the chill of the water, and so came to the 
trail. 

Now at the Idiot's Delight Dick and I parted com- 
244 



THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 

pany. By three o'clock I came again to the River, 
far up, halfway to the Big Falls. Deuce watched 
me gravely. With the first click of the reel he re- 
tired to the brush away from the back cast, there to 
remain until the pool was fished and we could con- 
tinue our journey. 

In the swift leaping water, at the smooth back of 
the eddy, in the white foam, under the dark cliff 
shadow, here, there, everywhere the bright flies drop 
softly like strange snowflakes. The game is as inter- 
esting as pistol-shooting. To hit the mark, that is 
enough. And then a swirl of water and a broad lazy 
tail wakes you to the fact that other matters are yours. 
Verily the fish of the North Country are mighty 
beyond all others. 

Over the River rests the sheen of light, over the 
hills rests the sheen of romance. The land is en- 
chanted. Birds dip and sway, advance and retreat, 
leaves toss their hands in greeting, or bend and whis- 
per one to the other ; splashes of sun fall heavy as 
metal through the yielding screens of branches ; little 
breezes wander hesitatingly here and there to sink 
like spent kites on the nearest bar of sun-warmed 
shingle; the stream shouts and gurgles, murmurs, 
hushes, lies still and secret as though to warn you 
to discretion, breaks away with a shriek of hilarity 
when your discretion has been assured. There is in 
you a great leisure, as though the day would never 
end. There is in you a great keenness. One part of 

245 



THE FOREST 

you is vibrantly alive. Your wrist muscles contract 
almost automatically at the swirl of a rise, and the 
hum of life along the gossamer of your line gains its 
communication with every nerve in your body. The 
question of gear and method you attack clear-minded. 
What fly ? Montreal, Parmachenee Belle, Royal 
Coachman, Silver Doctor, Professor, Brown Hackle, 
Cowdung, — these grand lures for the North Country 
trout receive each its due test and attention. And 
on the tail snell what fisherman has not the Gamble 
— the unusual, obscure, multinamed fly which may, 
in the occultism of his taste, attract the Big Fellows ? 
Besides there remains always the handling. Does 
your trout to-day fancy the skittering of his food, or 
the withdrawal in three jerks, or the inch-deep sink- 
ing of the fly ? Does he want it across current or up 
current, will he rise with a snap, or is he going to 
come slowly, or is he going to play *? These be prob- 
lems interesting, insistent to be solved, with the ready 
test within the reach of your skill. 

But that alertness is only the one side of your mood. 
No matter how difficult the selection, how strenuous 
the fight, there is in you a large feeling that might 
almost be described as Buddhistic. Time has no- 
thing to do with your problems. The world has 
quietly run down, and has been embalmed with all its 
sweetness of light and color and sound in a warm 
lethe bath of sun. This afternoon is going to last 
forever. You note and enjoy and savor the little 

246 



THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 

pleasures unhurried by the thought that anything else, 
whether of pleasure or duty, is to follow. 

And so for long delicious eons. The River flows 
on, ever on ; the hills watch, watch always ; the birds 
sing, the sun shines grateful across your shoulders; 
the big trout and the little rise in predestined order 
and make their predestined fight and go their predes- 
tined way either to liberty or the creel ; the pools and 
the rapids and the riffles slip by upstream as though 
they had been withdrawn rather than as though you 
had advanced. 

Then suddenly the day has dropped its wings. The 
earth moves forward with a jar. Things are to be 
accomplished ; things are being accomplished. The 
River is hurrying down to the Lake ; the birds have 
business of their own to attend to, an it please you ; 
the hills are waiting for something that has not yet 
happened, but they are ready. Startled, you look up. 
The afternoon has finished. Your last step has taken 
you over the edge of the shadow cast by the setting 
sun across the range of hills. 

For the first time you look about you to see where 
you are. It has not mattered before. Now you know 
that shortly it will be dark. Still remain below you 
four pools. A great haste seizes you. 

" If I take my rod apart, and strike through the 
woods," you argue, " I can make the Narrows, and I 
am sure there is a big trout there." 

Why the Narrows should be any more likely to 
247 



THE FOREST 

contain a big trout than any of the other three pools 
you would not be able to explain. In half an hour it 
will be dark. You hurry. In the forest it is already 
twilight, but by now you know the forest well. Pre- 
occupied, feverish with your great idea, you hasten 
on. The birds, silent all in the brooding of night, 
rise ghostly to right and left. Shadows steal away 
like hostile spies among the tree-trunks. The silver 
of last daylight gleams ahead of you through the 
brush. You know it for the Narrows, whither the 
instinct of your eagerness has led you as accurately 
as a compass through the forest. 

Fervently, as though this were of world's affairs 
the most important, you congratulate yourself on 
being in time. Your rod seems to joint itself. In a 
moment the cast drops like a breath on the molten 
silver. Nothing. Another try a trifle lower down. 
Nothing. A little wandering breeze spoils your fourth 
attempt, carrying the leader far to the left. Curses, 
deep and fervent. The daylight is fading, draining 
away. A fifth cast falls forty feet out. Slowly you 
drag the flies across the current, reluctant to recover 
until the latest possible moment. And so, when your 
rod is foolishly upright, your line slack, and your 
flies motionless, there rolls slowly up and over the 
trout of trouts. You see a broad side, the whirl of a 
fan-tail that looks to you to be at least six inches 
across — and the current slides on, silver-like, smooth, 
indifferent to the wild leap of your heart. 



THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 

Like a crazy man you shorten your line. Six sec- 
onds later your flies fall skillfully just upstream from 
where last you saw that wonderful tail. 

But six seconds may be a long, long period of time. 
You have feared and hoped and speculated and real- 
ized ; feared that the leviathan has pricked him- 
self and so will not rise again ; hoped that his appear- 
ance merely indicated curiosity which he will desire 
further to satisfy; speculated on whether your skill 
can drop the fly exactly on that spot, as it must be 
dropped ; and realized that, whatever be the truth as 
to all those fears and hopes and speculations, this is 
irrevocably your last chance. 

For an instant you allow the flies to drift down- 
stream, to be floated here and there by idle little 
eddies, to be sucked down and spat out of tiny suc- 
tion-holes. Then cautiously you draw them across 
the surface of the waters. Thump — thump — thump 
— your heart slows up with disappointment. Then 
mysteriously, like the stirring of the waters by some 
invisible hand, the molten silver is broken in its 
smoothness. The Royal Coachman quietly disap- 
pears. With all the brakes shrieking on your desire 
to shut your eyes and heave a mighty heave, you 
depress your butt and strike. 

Then in the twilight the battle. No leisure is here, 
only quivering, intense, agonized anxiety. The affair 
transcends the moment. Purposes and necessities of 
untold ages have concentrated, so that somehow back 

249 



THE FOREST 

of your consciousness rest hosts of disembodied hopes, 
tendencies, evolutionary progressions, all breathless 
lest you prove unequal to the struggle for which they 
have been so long preparing. Responsibility, vast, 
vague, formless, is yours. Only the fact that you are 
wholly occupied with the exigence of the moment 
prevents your understanding of what it is, but it 
hovers dark and depressing behind your possible 
failure. You must win. This is no fish : it is oppor- 
tunity itself; and once gone it will never return. The 
mysticism of lower dusk in the forest, of upper after- 
glow on the hills, of the chill of evening waters and 
winds, of the glint of strange phantoms under the 
darkness of cliffs, of the whisperings and shoutings 
of Things you are too busy to identify out in the gray 
of North Country awe — all these menace you with 
indeterminate dread. Knee-deep, waist-deep, swift 
water, slack water, downstream, upstream, with red 
eyes straining into the dimness, with every muscle 
taut and every nerve quivering, you follow the rip- 
ping of your line. You have consecrated yourself 
to the uttermost. The minutes stalk by you gigantic. 
You are a stable pin-point in whirling phantasms. 
And you are very little, very small, very inadequate 
among these Titans of circumstance. 

Thrice he breaks water, a white and ghostly ap- 
parition from the deep. Your heart stops with your 
reel, and only resumes its office when again the line 
sings safely. The darkness falls, and with it, like the 

250 



THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 

mysterious strength of Sir Gareth's opponent, falls 
the power of your adversary. His rushes shorten. 
The blown world of your uncertainty shrinks to the 
normal. From the haze of your consciousness, as 
through a fog, loom the old familiar forest, and 
the hills, and the River. Slowly you creep from that 
strange enchanted land. The sullen trout yields. In 
all gentleness you float him within reach of your 
net. Quietly, breathlessly you walk ashore, and over 
the beach, and yet an unnecessary hundred feet 
from the water lest he retain still a flop. Then you 
lay him upon the stones and lift up your heart in 
rejoicing. 

How you get to camp you never clearly know. 
Exultation lifts your feet. Wings, wings, O ye Red 
Gods, wings to carry the body whither the spirit hath 
already soared, and stooped, and circled back in im- 
patience to see why still the body lingers ! Ordi- 
narily you can cross the riffles above the Halfway 
Pool only with caution and prayer and a stout staff 
craftily employed. This night you can — and do — 
splash across hand-free, as recklessly as you would 
wade a little brook. There is no stumble in you, for 
you have done a great deed, and the Red Gods are 
smiling. 

Through the trees glows a light, and in the center 
of that light are leaping flames, and in the circle of 
that light stand, rough-hewn in orange, the tent and 
the table and the waiting figures of your companions. 

25 1 



THE FOREST 

You stop short, and swallow hard, and saunter into 
camp as one indifferent. 

Carelessly you toss aside your creel, — into the 
darkest corner, as though it were unimportant, — non- 
chalantly you lean your rod against the slant of your 
tent, wearily you seat yourself and begin to draw off 
your drenched garments. Billy bends toward the fire. 
Dick gets you your dry clothes. Nobody says any- 
thing, for everybody is hungry. No one asks you any 
questions, for on the River you get in almost any 
time of night. 

Finally, as you are hanging your wet things near 
the fire, you inquire casually over your shoulder, — 

" Dick, have any luck *? " 

Dick tells you. You listen with apparent interest. 
He has caught a three-pounder. He describes the 
spot and the method and the struggle. He is very 
much pleased. You pity him. 

The three of you eat supper, lots of supper. Billy 
arises first, filling his pipe. He hangs water over the 
fire for the dish-washing. You and Dick sit hunched 
on a log, blissfully happy in the moments of diges- 
tion, ruminative, watching the blaze. The tobacco 
smoke eddies and sucks upward to join the wood 
smoke. Billy moves here and there in the fulfillment 
of his simple tasks, casting his shadow wavering and 
gigantic against the fire-lit trees. By and by he has 
finished. He gathers up the straps of Dick's creel, 
and turns to the shadow for your own. He is going 

252 



THE CATCHING OF A CERTAIN FISH 

to clean the fish. It is the moment you have watched 
for. You shroud yourself in profound indifference. 

" Sacre ! " shrieks Billy. 

You do not even turn your head. 

"Jumping giraffes! why, it's a whale!" cries Dick. 

You roll a blase eye in their direction, as though 
such puerile enthusiasm wearies you. 

" Yes, it 's quite a little fish," you concede. 

They swarm down upon you, demanding particu- 
lars. These you accord laconically, a word at a time, 
in answer to direct question, between puffs of smoke. 

" At the Narrows. Royal Coachman. Just before 
I came in. Pretty fair fight. Just at the edge of the 
eddy." And so on. But your soul glories. 

The tape-line is brought out. Twenty-nine inches 
it records. Holy smoke, what a fish ! Your air im- 
plies that you will probably catch three more just like 
him on the morrow. Dick and Billy make tracings 
of him on the birch bark. You retain your lofty 
calm : but inside you are little quivers of rapture. 
And when you awake, late in the night, you are con- 
scious, first of all, that you are happy, happy, happy, 
all through ; and only when the drowse drains away 
do you remember why. 



253 



MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT 




XVIII 
MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT 

WE had been joined on the River by friends. 
" Doug," who never fished more than forty 
rods from camp, and was always inventing water- 
gauges, patent indicators, and other things, and who 
wore in his soft slouch hat so many brilliant trout 
flies that he irresistibly reminded you of flower- 
decked Ophelia; "Dinnis," who was large and good- 
natured and bubbling and popular ; Johnny, whose 
wide eyes looked for the first time on the woods-life, 
and whose awe-struck soul concealed itself behind 
assumptions; "Jim," six feet tall and three feet 
broad, with whom the season before I had penetrated 
to Hudson Bay ; and finally " Doc," tall, granite, ex- 
perienced, the best fisherman that ever hit the River. 
With these were Indians. Buckshot, a little Indian 
with a good knowledge of English ; Johnnie Chal- 
lan, a half-breed Indian, ugly, furtive, an efficient 
man about camp ; and Tawabinisay himself. This 
was an honor due to the presence of Doc. Tawa- 
binisay approved of Doc. That was all there was to 
say about it. 

After a few days, inevitably the question of 
257 



THE FOREST 

Kawagama came up. Billy, Johnnie Challan, and 
Buckshot squatted in a semicircle, and drew dia- 
grams in the soft dirt with a stick. Tawabinisay sat 
on a log and overlooked the proceedings. Finally he 
spoke. 

" Tawabinisay " (they always gave him his full 
title ; we called him Tawab) " tell me lake you find 
he no Kawagama," translated Buckshot. " He called 
Black Beaver Lake." 

" Ask him if he '11 take us to Kawagama," I re- 
quested. 

Tawabinisay looked very doubtful. 

" Come on, Tawab," urged Doc, nodding at him 
vigorously. " Don't be a clam. We won't take any- 
body else up there." 

The Indian probably did not comprehend the 
words, but he liked Doc. 

"A'-right," he pronounced laboriously. 

Buckshot explained to us his plans. 

" Tawabinisay tell me," said he, " he don' been to 
Kawagama seven year. To-morrow he go blaze trail. 
Nex' day we go." 

" How would it be if one or two of us went with 
him to-morrow to see how he does it ? " asked Jim. 

Buckshot looked at us strangely. 

" / don't want to follow him," he replied with a 
significant simplicity. " He run like a deer." 

"Buckshot," said I, pursuing the inevitable lin- 
guistics, " what does Kawagama mean ? " 

258 



MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT 

Buckshot thought for quite two minutes. Then 
he drew a semicircle. 

" W'at you call dat ? " he asked. 

"Crescent, like moon? half-circle 1 ? horseshoe? 
bow ? " we proposed. 

Buckshot shook his head at each suggestion. He 
made a wriggling mark, then a wide sweep, then a 
loop. 

" All dose," said he, " w'at you call him ? " 

" Curve ! " we cried. 

"Ah hah," assented Buckshot, satisfied. 

" Buckshot," we went on, " what does Tawabini- 
say mean ? " 

" Man - who - travels - by - moonlight," he replied, 
promptly. 

The following morning Tawabinisay departed, 
carrying a lunch and a hand-axe. At four o'clock he 
was back, sitting on a log and smoking a pipe. In 
the mean time we had made up our party. 

Tawabinisay himself had decided that the two 
half-breeds must stay at home. He wished to share 
his secret only with his own tribesmen. The fiat 
grieved Billy, for behold he had already put in much 
time on this very search, and naturally desired to be 
in at the finish. Dick, too, wanted to go, but him we 
decided too young and light for a fast march. Dinnis 
had to leave the River in a day or so ; Johnnie was 
a little doubtful as to the tramp, although he con- 
cealed his doubt — at least to his own satisfaction — 

2 59 



THE FOREST 

under a variety of excuses. Jim and Doc would go, 
of course. There remained Doug. 

We found that individual erecting a rack of many 
projecting arms — like a Greek warrior's trophy — at 
the precise spot where the first rays of the morning 
sun would strike it. On the projecting arms he pur- 
posed hanging his wet clothes. 

" Doug," said we, " do you want to go to Kawa- 
gama to-morrow ? " 

Doug turned on us a sardonic eye. He made no 
direct answer, but told the following story : — 

"Once upon a time Judge Carter was riding 
through a rural district in Virginia. He stopped at 
a negro's cabin to get his direction. 

" ' Uncle,' said he, ' can you direct me to Colonel 
Thompson's ? ' 

"'Yes sah,' replied the negro; 'yo' goes down this 
yah road 'bout two mile till yo' comes to an ol' ailm 
tree, and then yo' tu'ns sha'p to th' right down a lane 
fo' 'bout a qua'ter of a mile. Thah you sees a big 
white house. Yo' wants to go through th' ya'd, to a 
paf that takes you a spell to a gate. Yo' follows that 
road to th' lef' till yo' comes to three roads goin' up 
a hill ; and, jedge, it dori mattah which one of them 
thah roads yo' take^yd gets lost surer 'n hell anyway ! ' " 

Then Doug turned placidly back to the construc- 
tion of his trophy. 

We interpreted this as an answer, and made up an 
outfit for five. 

260 



MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT 

The following morning at six o'clock we were 
under way. Johnnie Challan ferried us across the river 
in two installments. We waved our hands and 
plunged through the brush screen. 

Thenceforth it was walk half an hour, rest five 
minutes, with almost the regularity of clockwork. 
We timed the Indians secretly, and found they varied 
by hardly a minute from absolute fidelity to this 
schedule. We had at first, of course, to gain the 
higher level of the hills, but Tawabinisay had the day 
before picked out a route that mounted as easily as 
the country would allow, and through a hardwood 
forest free of underbrush. Briefly indicated, our way 
led first through the big trees and up the hills, then 
behind a great cliff knob into a creek valley, through 
a quarter-mile of bottom-land thicket, then by an 
open strip to the first little lake. This we ferried by 
means of the bark canoe carried on the shoulders of 
Tawabinisay. 

In the course of the morning we thus passed four 
lakes. Throughout the entire distance to Kawagama 
were the fresh axe-blazes the Indian had made the 
day before. These were neither so frequent nor as 
plainly cut as a white man's trail, but each represented 
a pause long enough for the clip of an axe. In ad- 
dition the trail had been made passable for a canoe. 
That meant the cutting out of overhanging branches 
wherever they might catch the bow of the craft. In 
the thicket a little road had been cleared, and the 

261 



THE FOREST 

brush had been piled on either side. To an unaccus- 
tomed eye it seemed the work of two days at least. 
Yet Tawabinisay had picked out his route, cleared 
and marked it thus, skirted the shores of the lakes we 
were able to traverse in the canoe, and had returned 
to the River in less time than we consumed in merely 
reaching the Lake itself! Truly, as Buckshot said, 
he must have " run like a deer." 

Tawabinisay has a delightful grin which he dis- 
plays when pleased or good-humored or puzzled or 
interested or comprehending, just as a dog sneezes 
and wrinkles up his nose in like case. He is essentially 
kind-hearted. If he likes you and approves of you, 
he tries to teach you, to help you, to show you things. 
But he never offers to do any part of your work, and 
on the march he never looks back to see if you are 
keeping up. You can shout at him until you are 
black in the face, but never will he pause until rest 
time. Then he squats on his heels, lights his pipe, and 
grins. 

Buckshot adored him. This opportunity of travel- 
ing with him was an epoch. He drank in eagerly 
the brief remarks of his " old man," and detailed them 
to us with solemnity, prefaced always by his " Tawa- 
binisay tell me." Buckshot is of the better class of 
Indian himself, but occasionally he is puzzled by the 
woods-noises. Tawabinisay never. As we cooked 
lunch, we heard the sound of steady footsteps in the 
forest — pat ; then a pause ; then pat ; just like a 

262 




" Tawabinisay has a delightful grin 



MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT 

deer browsing. To make sure I inquired of Buck- 
shot. 

" What is it ? " 

Buckshot listened a moment. 

" Deer," said he, decisively ; then, not because he 
doubted his own judgment, but from habitual de- 
ference, he turned to where Tawabinisay was frying 
things. 

" Qwaw *? " he inquired. 

Tawabinisay never even looked up. 

"Adji-domo" (squirrel), said he. 

We looked at each other incredulously. It sounded 
like a deer. It did not sound in the least like a squir- 
rel. An experienced Indian had pronounced it a deer. 
Nevertheless it was a squirrel. 

We approached Kawagama by way of a gradual 
slope clothed with a beautiful beech and maple for- 
est whose trees were the tallest of those species I have 
ever seen. Ten minutes brought us to the shore. 
There was no abrupt bursting in on Kawagama 
through screens of leaves ; we entered leisurely to 
her presence by way of an antechamber whose spa- 
ciousness permitted no vulgar surprises. After a time 
we launched the canoe from a natural dock afforded 
by a cedar root, and so stood ready to cross to our 
permanent camp. But first we drew our knives and 
erased from a giant birch the half-grown-over name 
of the banker Clement. 

There seems to me little use in telling you that 
263 



THE FOREST 

Kawagama is about four miles long by a mile wide, 
is shaped like a crescent, and lies in a valley sur- 
rounded by high hills ; nor that its water is so trans- 
parent that the bottom is visible until it fades into 
the sheer blackness of depth ; nor that it is alive with 
trout ; nor that its silence is the silence of a vast soli- 
tude, so that always, even at daybreak or at high 
midday, it seems to be late afternoon. That would 
convey little to you. I will inform you quite simply 
that Kawagama is a very beautiful specimen of the 
wilderness lake ; that it is as the Lord made it ; and 
that we had a good time. 

Did you ever fish with the fly from a birch-bark 
canoe on absolutely still water ? You do not seem 
to move. But far below you, gliding, silent, ghost- 
like, the bottom slips beneath. Like a weather-vane in 
an imperceptible current of air your bow turns to right 
or left in apparent obedience to the mere will of your 
companion. And the flies drop softly like down. 
Then the silence becomes sacred. You whisper, — 
although there is no reason for your whispering ; you 
move cautiously lest your reel scrape the gunwale. 
An inadvertent click of the paddle is a profanation. 
The only creatures in all God's world possessing the 
right to utter aloud a single syllable are the loon, far 
away, and the winter wren, near at hand. Even the 
trout fight grimly, without noise, their white bodies 
flashing far down in the dimness. 

Hour after hour we stole here and there like con- 
264 



MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT 

spirators. Where showed the circles of a fish's rise, 
thither crept we to drop a fly on their center as in 
the bull's-eye of a target. The trout seemed to linger 
near their latest capture, so often we would catch 
one exactly where we had seen him break water 
some little time before. In this was the charm of the 
still hunt. Shoal water, deep water, it seemed all the 
same to our fortunes. The lake was full of fish, and 
beautiful fish they were, with deep glowing bronze 
bellies, and all of from a pound to a pound and a 
half in weight. The lake had not been fished. Prob- 
ably somewhere in those black depths over one of 
the bubbling spring-holes that must feed so cold and 
clear a body of water, are big fellows lying, and prob- 
ably the crafty minnow or spoon might lure them out. 
But we were satisfied with our game. 

At other times we paddled here and there in ex- 
ploration of coves, inlets, and a tiny little brook that 
flowed westward from a reed marsh to join another 
river running parallel to our own. 

The Indians had erected a huge lean-to of birch 
bark, from the ribs of which hung clothes and the 
little bags of food. The cooking-fire was made in 
front of it between two giant birch-trees. At evening 
the light and heat reflected strongly beneath the 
shelter, leaving the forest in impenetrable darkness. 
To the very edge of mystery crowded the strange 
woods-noises, the eerie influences of the night, like 
wolves afraid of the blaze. We felt them hovering, 

265 



THE FOREST 

vague, huge, dreadful, just outside the circle of safety 
our fire had traced about us. The cheerful flames 
were dancing familiars who cherished for us the 
home feeling in the middle of a wilderness. 

Two days we lingered, then took the back track. 
A little after noon we arrived at the camp, empty 
save for Johnnie Challan. Towards dark the fisher- 
men straggled in. Time had been paid them in 
familiar coinage. They had demanded only accus- 
tomed toll of the days, but we had returned laden 
with strange and glittering memories. 



266 



APOLOGIA 




XIX 
APOLOGIA 

THE time at last arrived for departure. Deep 
laden were the canoes ; heavy laden were we. 
The Indians shot away down the current. We fol- 
lowed for the last time the dim blazed trail, forded 
for the last time the shallows of the River. At the 
Burned Rock Pool we caught our lunch fish from 
the ranks of leviathans. Then the trodden way of 
the Fur Trail, worn into a groove so deep and a sur- 
face so smooth that vegetation has left it as bare as 
ever, though the Post has been abandoned these 
many years. At last the scrub spruce, and the sandy 
soil, and the blue restless waters of the Great Lake. 
With the appearance of the fish-tug early the follow- 
ing day, the summer ended. 

How often have I ruminated in the long marches 
the problem of the Forest. Subtle she is, and mys- 
terious, and gifted with a charm that lures. Vast she 
is, and dreadful, so that man bows before her fiercer 
moods, a little thing. Gentle she is, and kindly, so 
that she denies nothing, whether of the material or 
spiritual, to those of her chosen who will seek. Au- 
gust she is, and yet of a homely sprightly gentleness. 

269 



THE FOREST 

Variable she is in her many moods. Night, day, sun, 
cloud, rain, snow, wind, lend to her their best of 
warmth and cold, of comfort and awe, of peace and 
of many shoutings, and she accepts them, but yet 
remains greater and more enduring than they. In 
her is all the sweetness of little things. Murmurs of 
water and of breeze, faint odors, wandering streams 
of tepid air, stray bird-songs in fragment as when a 
door is opened and closed, the softness of moss, the 
coolness of shade, the glimpse of occult affairs in the 
woods-life, accompany her as Titania her court. How 
to express these things *? how to fix on paper in a 
record, as one would describe the Capitol at Wash- 
ington, what the Forest is ? That is what I have 
asked myself often, and that is what I have never 
yet found out. 

This is the wisdom reflection has taught. One 
cannot imprison the ocean in a vial of sea-water : 
one cannot imprison the Forest inside the covers of 
a book. 

There remains the second best. I have thought 
that perhaps if I were to attempt a series of detached 
impressions, without relation, without sequence ; if 
I were to suggest a little here the beauty of a moon- 
beam, there the humor of a rainstorm, at the last 
you might, by dint of imagination and sympathy, 
get some slight feeling of what the great woods are. 
It is the method of the painter. Perhaps it may 
suffice. 

270 



APOLOGIA 

For this reason let no old camper look upon this 
volume as a treatise on woodcraft. Woodcraft there 
is in it, just as there is woodcraft in the Forest itself, 
but much of the simplest and most obvious does not 
appear. The painter would not depict every twig, as 
would the naturalist. 

Equally it cannot be considered a book of travel 
nor of description. The story is not consecutive ; the 
adventures not exciting; the landscape not defined. 
Perhaps it may be permitted to call it a book of 
suggestion. Often on the street we have had opened 
to us by the merest sketches of incident limitless 
vistas of memory. A momentary pose of the head 
of a passer-by, a chance word, the breath of a faint 
perfume, — these bring back to us the entirety of 
forgotten scenes. Some of these essays may perform 
a like office for you. I cannot hope to give you the 
Forest. But perhaps a word or a sentence, an incident, 
an impression, may quicken your imagination, so that 
through no conscious direction of my own the won- 
der of the Forest may fill you, as the mere sight of a 
conch-shell will sometimes fill you with the wonder 
of the sea. 

THE END 



271 



SUGGESTIONS FOR OUTFIT 




SUGGESTIONS FOR OUTFIT 

In reply to inquiries as to necessary outfit for camping 
and woods-traveling, the author furnishes the following 
lists : — 

I . Provisions per man, one week. 

7 lbs. flour; 5 lbs. pork; 1-5 lb. tea; 2 lbs. beans; 1 1-2 
lbs. sugar; 1 1-2 lbs. rice; 1 1-2 lbs. prunes and raisins; 
I-IO lb. lard; 1 lb. oatmeal; baking-powder; matches; 
soap; pepper; salt; 1-3 lb. tobacco — (weight, a little over 
20 lbs.). This will last much longer if you get game and 
fish. 

2. Pack one, or absolute necessities for hard trip. 

Wear hat ; suit woolen underwear ; shirt ; trousers ; socks ; 
silk handkerchief; cotton handkerchief; moccasins. 

Carry sweater (3 lbs.) ; extra drawers (1 1-2 lbs.) ; 
2 extra pairs socks ; gloves (buckskin) ; towel ; 2 extra 
pairs moccasins ; surgeons' plaster ; laxative ; pistol and car- 
tridges ; fishing-tackle ; blanket (7 1-2 lbs.) ; rubber blanket 
(1 lb.); tent (8 lbs.); small axe (2 1-2 lbs.); knife; mos- 
quito - dope ; compass ; match-box ; tooth-brush ; comb ; 
small whetstone — (weight, about 25 lbs.); 2 tin or alumi- 
num pails ; 1 frying-pan ; 1 cup ; 1 knife, fork, and spoon 
— (weight, 4 lbs. if of aluminum). 

Whole pack under 50 lbs. In case of two or more peo- 
ple, each pack would be lighter, as tent, tinware, etc., would 
do for both. 

275 



THE FOREST 

3. Pack two — for luxuries and easy trips — extra to pack one. 
More fishing-tackle ; camera ; 1 more pair socks ; 1 more 
suit underclothes ; extra sweater ; wading-shoes of canvas ; 
large axe ; mosquito net ; mending materials ; kettle ; 
candles ; more cooking-utensils ; extra shirt ; whiskey. 



276 






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